#drk5

Chapter 2 Not-So-Daily Life*

(*or “Deadly Life” if you want to be consistent with the localized games)

This chapter starts with Samidare returning to her room at the dorms in the early morning hours, as has become custom as of late. Since classes have started for the day, there’s no one around, making the entire area feel creepy and surreal. 

I rushed to my room, seeking its life-saving comfort, and threw open the door.

But…Kirigiri wasn’t there.

I had expected that she of all people would have already solved her mystery, and I’d find her curled up in my bed, but instead I found nothing in the futon. It wasn’t even warm, hinting that she hadn’t returned yet.

I collapsed into bed and passed out. It was a dreamless, death-like sleep.

I woke up to the sound of a bell, shooting up in bed and looking around to assess my surroundings.

Looking around, soaked in sweat and suffering chills, I realized I wasn’t at the site of a bizarre murder, or trapped within a creepy building. It was just my room.

Whew.

I’d been able to come home safely. Even as my head pounded from the drop in my blood pressure, the sense that this was real finally began to wash over me. 

I looked at the clock to find that it was already noon. The bell I’d heard was the school bell signaling we were halfway through the day.

Next, I checked my phone; this was the set time we’d agreed upon to check in. I was supposed to hear from Yaki at twelve sharp, followed by Yadorigi fifteen minutes later, then Mizuiyama, and finally Kirigiri. 

Even though it was five past noon, though, I didn’t get a call from Yaki.

Without bothering to tame my bedhead, I trudged to the dorm’s cafeteria and switched on the TV there. A news report announced Yaki’s death, on the corner of a shuttered up shopping street.

So he was killed…

Though he hadn’t been the most approachable type, he had been a good person, and very cooperative.

If we hadn’t asked him to help us with the investigations, he’d probably still be alive. No matter how you sliced it, his blood was on my hands. I might as well have killed him myself. Me. I killed him. I…

I hid my face in my hands in the empty cafeteria, hiding in the darkness behind my eyelids.

This was the path I had chosen.

The one Kirigiri had been walking all this time.

No matter how hard I worked to protect people, in the end, I couldn’t save everyone’s lives. No matter what, I had to make choices about who to save and who to let go.

Though, maybe if I’d been talented enough, I could have saved him.

Please, just let me save more people…

At that moment, my phone buzzed in my hand. I didn’t recognize the number.

“…Hello?”

“Is this Samidare Yui-san? This is Tooakitsu Nazuna.”

“Ah!” I was so happy to hear a familiar voice that I looked up without thinking. “Naz-chan! What’s up? How did you get this number?”

“Detective Yadorigi asked me to call you at exactly 12:15. You had an agreement about checking in, yes?”

“Oh, yeah, I mean… Man, how dependable.”

After the whole ordeal, Nazuna, Tsukiyo, and Yadorigi all went to the hospital in the ambulance. They recommended I come along too, but I just wanted to get home as soon as possible and regain some sense of normalcy. 

“Yadorigi-san is currently in the ICU. He was conscious on the way to the hospital, but given that he sustained a head injury, you never know how things may go.”

“Yeah… Naz-chan, are you and Tsukiyo okay?”

“There’s nothing wrong with us. Tsukiyo-san is sleeping right here beside me.”

“That’s good to hear…”

“Also, I have a message for you from Yadorigi-san.”

Nazuna told me the details of the Kareobana Academy case. Since I hadn’t actually been a part of it myself, the whole thing sounded outrageous.

“Thanks, that means we’ve solved at least one of the cases so far. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank Yadorigi-san.”

Without him, we’d have been trapped in the Libra Girls’ Academy forever, and the case would have gone unsolved. On top of that, he even solved the Kareobana Academy case too. No wonder–Rank 2 detectives were on a whole other level.

Perhaps best of all, he hadn’t betrayed us in the end. Though even without the whole Mizuiyama thing, I was so happy that someone as attentive and skilled as him was helping us that I could have cried. 

“By the way, what happened to the Mystery Club? It looked like they came with you to the hospital…”

“After making sure Yadorigi-san was okay, they headed to the police station. Apparently they went to let them know what happened during the case.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’ll leave that part of it to them, then. Sounds like they’ve got it.”

“Indeed. Oh, also, Yadorigi-san said one last thing. ‘It may be inevitable that I need to retreat from the front lines, but I have no intention of giving up. I need to fight for her sake.’”

“Her sake?”

There was only one person he could mean.

So, she really had been that important to him. I felt like I could more or less tell why he’d decided to help us. Perhaps it was simply by chance that he was on our side. 

After the message, Naz talks about how cool Samidare was, and how even though she’s a high school student like her and Tsukiyo, she seemed so much older and wiser. Samidare protests, claiming that she didn’t do much of anything, and asks if she’s calling her an old lady, to which Naz says no, and she shouldn’t be so modest. The way she was ready to protect them no matter what was really impressive, and she thinks that being a detective is a really noble profession. 

In fact, she asks Samidare if she too could become a detective someday, and in the process of answering that hell yeah, she’s got the stuff, Samidare remembers that there’s some significant drawbacks to the life. 

She remembers what Mizuiyama asked her earlier:

“But who saves the heroes who save so many others?”

Her words echoed in the back of my brain.

Who did save detectives when they were hurt or in trouble?

“Samidare Yui-san. When this is all over, can we meet up again?” Nazuna asked.

“Sure, of course. Hey, when summer comes, let’s all go to the beach.”

“That sounds great. I’ll have to lose some weight before then.”

And with that promise for sometime in the unknown future, we hung up.

It was 12:30.

It was time for Mizuiyama to check in, but given that she was currently under arrest, that probably wasn’t going to happen.

As soon as I thought that, my phone rang.

Worried, I pressed the button to accept the call. 

“Hello…?”

“You know there is no need to be that frightened of me, right?”

It was Mizuiyama.

Dun Dun DUUUUUUUN!

Chapter 1 The Mania of Existence: Libra Girls’ Academy - Samidare Yui

As you may or may not remember from last time, Samidare had figured out the trick behind the Libra Girls’ Academy case, and is currently being held at nail gun point by Mizuiyama, who had also not only solved Yaki’s case for him, but had also brained him in the head with a lead pipe like some kind of Japanese-themed Clue character.

This part picks up where part VIII left off, with Samidare being on point as ever.

“You’re the culprit, Mizuiyama-san?”

“That I am.” She nodded, the nail gun still pressed to my chest. “I had thought that I’d win by separating you from Kirigiri Kyouko and forcing you to solve the case on your own, but you defied my expectations by figuring out the secret of Libra Girls’ Academy. Unfortunately, that has made you quite the pain in my side.”

“So you ending up the suspect during the Takeda Haunted House case was all part of the plan too?”

“Perhaps it was.”

“What do you mean, ‘perhaps’?”

“This is all being guided by Mr. Ryuuzouji, no?”

So basically, she was saying that despite all of the seemingly random things that had happened, we were still all playing right into Ryuuzouji Gekka’s hand.

“Why did you kill Takezaki-san?”

“We had a bit of an altercation two years ago when I was working as a school counselor, but I won’t get into the details. It’s a long story that you won’t be interested in anyway, and my arm is getting tired.”

((Well jeez, Mizuiyama. I wanted to know. Just like I wanted to know why the Despair Twins have different last names.))

“Mizuiyama-san, if you’re the culprit, then that means you’re well-versed in Duel Noir. You’ve lost. Even if you killed me, that wouldn’t change anything.”

“I suppose you’re right. I have lost this game. But what about the others still remaining?”

“Huh...?”

“You must solve all twelve cases in order to defeat Mr. Ryuuzouji, isn’t that right?”

I had no idea what she was getting at, so I just nodded.

“You really don’t pick up on much, do you? You need me to explain? I don’t want Mr. Ryuuzouji to step down. Not as a detective, and not as a member of the Committee for the Salvation of the Victims of Crime.”

Ah, so that was it. She was one of Ryuuzouji Gekka’s devotees, huh.

Even compared to other great detectives, Ryuuzouji was on an entirely different level. Lots of people looked up to him and wanted to be just like him. I had to admit that I’d had quite the respect for him too, so much so that even now I couldn’t shake it entirely.

“I too have considered becoming someone who could save people. Despite that, there’s just some kind of deficiency in me that prevents that...conviction, in other words. Conviction is easy to talk about, but much harder to follow through on. There are so many things that can prey on it... Giving up because of a lack of skill, making concessions to the opinions of those around you, allowing your authority to be undermined... There are so many ways for it to break under the slightest pressure. Yet, what I see in Mr. Ryuuzouji’s expression is pure, beautiful conviction. If you follow the laws of this world, beauty is stability. Like transmuting something on a molecular level to create gold--don’t you think conviction could be said to be the emotional form of that?” Mizuiyama said, excited.

I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, but it was clear that she was devoted to Ryuuzouji. 

((I mean, who wouldn’t be? Dude is badass. Even Junko Lico respects him.))

“I mean, if you kill me here, it’s true I wouldn’t be able to solve all twelve cases, but...do you really think Ryuuzouji-san would want to live that way? Considering how much he talks about fair play, I can’t imagine he’d be satisfied with our battle of wits ending this way.”

“You sure are speaking as if you know anything about anything,” Mizuiyama said, angrily pressing the nail gun into me. “You misunderstand. I have no intention of killing you here. Just as originally intended, I plan to keep you held prisoner until the time limit is up.”

“You can try, but someone will come to rescue me. I have full faith in that.”

“For instance, Kirigiri Kyouko? You have a point...she is the most dangerous adversary I have right now. But I wonder if she’d even bother to come here? Remember, I have your phone. I can have you tell her yourself that you’re doing just fine.”

“And if I tell her I’m in danger?”

“Well then, if you were that dedicated to throwing everything away, I suppose you’d force my hand, and I’d have to take a more forceful approach to ending the game. In other words, I’d kill you.”

“It doesn’t matter, she’d still come here of her own accord anyway. After solving all of the other cases, she’d come here no doubt. Probably faster than you’d think, even!”

((Samidare doesn’t even flinch at this, she’s so secure. What a good. I love this ship.))

“Don’t worry, I’ve already planned a countermeasure for that.”

“How?”

“Yesterday, after I split off from all of you, I went to the Museum of Medieval Western European Torture Devices as promised and poked around. Right after that, I headed to Bar GOODBYE to investigate there. By the way, I’ve already devised the culprit and the trick for both cases.”

((To be fair, the culprit for the Bar GOODBYE case wasn’t exactly difficult.))

“Wha?”

“Do you understand what that means?”

“...I don’t.”

“I already know the question and the answer for both cases. I’ve cracked both of them before any of you, and whether or not I hand over that information is entirely up to my discretion.”

“Who cares? We can just investigate ourselves!”

“Looks like you still don’t get it. You’re all lagging behind. While you’re all playing catch up, I could have mixed lies in with the evidence. Of course, I can’t do anything to change the answer, but what about the question? I could plant false evidence, fake testimony, involve unrelated people as red herrings...”

((A few years later, Kirigiri just shakes her head during the second trial of Junko’s game, thinking about how Togami is amateur hour.))

“Huh?!”

How did she even come up with something like that?

“So next I’m going to start handing out fake information like candy. You lack the ability to tell if any of the clues you find are real or fake. You’d run out of time trying to puzzle it out.”

“You aren’t our only source of information, you know! Putting the museum aside, Yaki-san is handling the case at the bar.”

“He’s dead.”

“If we just ask him for informa... What did you just say?”

“He’s dead.”

“He died?”

“Yes. I killed him. Oh dear, it seems I’ve added an unnecessary crime to my plate. I may have lost my chance at changing my name and starting a new life since I lost the game, but if I can help Mr. Ryuuzouji win, then I don’t mind staking my life on this.”

“Why are you so into Ryuuzouji-san...?”

“Haven’t you ever wondered who comes to the aid of the hero who has saved so many?” Mizuiyama said in a harsh tone. “No one thinks of the worries he carries on his shoulders. He has the right to salvation.”

“Can you really call what you’re doing salvation though? You’re just getting in the way of our showdown!”

“Shut up! What are you calling a showdown?!”

The usually reserved Mizuiyama exploded in fury.

Looks like I had touched a nerve.

“How dare you... A showdown, ha! ...Why were you chosen...?”

Mizuiyama’s hand trembled, but I knew she couldn’t lay a finger on me.

Of that I was sure. This was still Ryuuzouji’s game, and she’d never dream of breaking its rules.

“Don’t move.” Mizuiyama wiped her eyes with her free hand. “The second you think I won’t shoot, you seal your fate and prove what an idiot you are. I’ll do what I want. If you don’t want to end up like that man over there...”

It’s at this point that they realize that Yadorigi’s body is gone, a conspicuous blood trail leading out of the chapel and into the hallway. 

They both realize that Tsukiyo and Naz haven’t been sitting idly while all of this villain monologuing has been going on.

Mizuiyama keeps Samidare at nail gun point and has her walk backwards across the chapter and open the door to the hallway. There, they see Nazuna and Tsukiyo dragging Yadorigi toward the room at the end of the hall, and thanks to the ridiculousness of Samidare having to walk backwards toward them, they don’t get there in time to stop them from hiding out in the scale room. 

They go in, the scale goes down, and they’re no longer accessible.

Mizuiyama isn’t too upset by this, saying they aren’t her focus anyway. She moves the nail gun to aim at Samidare’s head instead.

“On your knees, hands behind your back.”

“Um...”

“I don’t care, just do it!” she yelled.

It seemed like she was getting close to her breaking point. It would be better not to push her right now.

I followed her orders.

I was really in it now.

What would Kirigiri Kyouko do at a time like this?

...That wouldn’t work. There was a huge gulf between our basic level of ability. I didn’t know any self-defense techniques, and it’s not like my quick wit was going to tip the scales.

“As we agreed, you are going to sit here obediently and wait for time to run out.”

Mizuiyama pulled a set of handcuffs from somewhere and slapped them on my wrists.

How many times had I been handcuffed now in recent memory...?

Just accept the kink, Samidare. It will be easier this way.

Mizuiyama goes on to say that she’ll feed Samidare and let her use the bathroom and bathe as she deems fit, though if she tries anything funny, those privileges will be revoked.

It’s at this point that they hear someone’s voice from the chapel.

“Hey, Detectiiiiive! Where’d you go? We thought we were trapped, but then all of a sudden we could get out!”

It was a boy’s voice. He sounded like an idiot.

Who the heck was that?

“Oh, someone’s here.”

They entered into the hallway from the still open door.

“Detectiiiiiiive... Huh, who’re you?”

A short young man in a trench coat was ambling our way. Behind him I could see a robust, punk-looking boy and a girl wearing a qipao for some reason.

What was with this weird group?

Something I couldn’t quite accept was going on.

Mizuiyama appeared to be the same boat.

Thrown off, she turned to face them, nail gun drawn and aimed in their direction.

“D-Don’t come any closer!”

“Yo, Columbo, this is lookin’ pretty damn rough, y’know?”

It seemed the punk boy had finally realized something was amiss.

“RUN!” I yelled at them, as loud as I could.

“What should we do, Senpai? They’re telling us to run...?”

“Telling us to run? No, no, that’s them asking for help! Let’s go, Kousuke, Ellery!”

The boy in the trench coat began to run toward us.

“Feckin’ hell!”

The punk and the girl in qipao followed after.

What the heck were they thinking?!

In a panic, Mizuiyama aimed the gun and pulled the trigger with a trembling finger.

A fat nail fired from the gun with a thun sound.

“Ellery!”

The girl opened the umbrella she had in her right hand. The nail ripped into it, but stopped, its head still visible on this side.

“Kousuke! Jump!”

“Alright!”

The punk boy sprang from behind the umbrella, like a giant bullet, drop-kicking Mizuiyama.

((I fucking love these side novels, man.))

Surprisingly even for a small woman, Mizuiyama flew backwards into the door so hard the air around me shuddered. She collapsed to the floor, looking like a doll whose soul had just left it.

“Y-Yo, she ain’t dead, right? I don’t want to be a fuckin’ murderer!”

“It’s okay... She’s alive...” said the qipao-clad girl, taking Mizuiyama’s pulse.

“That sure was a close one, eh young miss?” the trench coat wearing boy said, coming closer. “We are the escheemed members of the Ouu Daitouitsu University Myschtery Research Club, at your schervice.”

“What’s the fuckin’ lisp, man? Ah, that’s our club prez.”

“President, that was...not very cool...”

“I uh...thank you?” I still had no idea what was going on, but I bowed my head for the time being. “Could you get these handcuffs off me?”

“Aw yeah, it’s time!”

The boy pulled something that looked like a hairpin from his trench coat pocket and stuck it into the keyhole of my handcuffs. After about five minutes, during which he kept muttering “huh? weird” to himself, in the end the cuffs came off.

I used them to restrain Mizuiyama instead.

Letting out a sigh of relief now that the danger had passed, I sank to the floor.

Samidare learns that the Mystery Research Club was involved in the Kareobana Academy case, and tagged along with Yadorigi to join him here. Originally, only Yadorigi was going to get off the helicopter, but the club members (minus Tooru, obviously) wanted to help out and so disembarked as well. 

While investigating and ripping the boards sealing the entrance, they ended up entering into the room on the opposite end of the scales as Samidare & co., which was why they were able to get out. (Samidare notes that they must have been slightly heavier to set off that reaction, considering that they were roughly the same number of people, plus a body on one side and a Virgin Mary statue on the other. She chalks this up to Kousuke being a big boy.)

Samidare considers how Mizuiyama’s plan was likely to escape once she and the girls were trapped, planning to just seal the doors back up from the outside. But then she got to the entryway, found it already busted open, and in her panic jumped out to attack Yadorigi.

After cuffing Mizuiyama, we began to carry items in to try and offset the scales and move the left tower. We used large rocks lying around outside, boards that had been used to seal up the door...then shut the door to see if the scales moved. When they didn’t, we tried adding more. Following several failed attempts, we finally got the scales to move again.

We rushed to the right tower.

When we opened the door, Tsukiyo and Nazuna looked in our direction, terrified. Once they saw it was me, though, they threw themselves forward to hug me and sobbed.

“He! He’s still alive! We need to hurry and get him to a hospital!” Tsukiyo said, pointing toward Yadorigi. Her and Nazuna’s sailor uniforms were smeared with blood. I wondered if they’d held onto Yadorigi this entire time.

“He’s the one who suggested we hide in this room. Thanks to him, we were saved,” Nazuna said.

Thanks to them putting their combined weight on the scale, they were able to force the room down and not let anyone else in. That was what had let the Mystery Club members out, and thanks to that, I’d been saved from my desperate situation.

It was just after seven a.m. on January 12th, that the case of Libra Girls’ Academy was closed.

So yeah, that’s it for Chapter 1 of DRK5!

The next chapter is pretty hefty compared to these mini-chapters, so it will take me a little bit to get it all down. 

That said though, I’m back in the swing of things and will start working on it right away!

Chapter 1 The Mania of Existence: Libra Girls’ Academy - Samidare Yui

For those of you reading these as I post them, here’s a quick reminder of the current stakes:

Kareobana Academy case: solved, Yadorigi last seen with Lico heading back to the others, current status unknown

Bar GOODBYE case: still unsolved, with Yaki dead

Museum of Medieval Western European Torture Devices case: Mizuiyama seems to have figured it out, but is alone after dark in the museum after having had a really eerie encounter with Lico

Twins Research Facility case: solved, though Kirigiri is currently unconscious and bound in the back of Tsutsumi’s car, ready to be used as a hostage to make Samidare let him go

Libra Girls’ Academy case: unsolved, though last time we left, Samidare had an epiphany about the trick involved

Obviously, when she announces this, Tsukiyo and Nazuna are pretty shocked and want to know what she means.

Samidare goes to the desk and starts to draw to show them, which is also helpfully supplied for the reader, since it’s kind of complicated to explain. I’ll just insert the diagram from the book, which is something I usually don’t do, but I think it’ll save us both a lot of headache. 

“Libra means ‘scales’, right? What I mean is that this entire building is one huge scale.”

Both Tsukiyo and Nazuna don’t really process that, so Samidare goes on to explain that the room they’re in right now is sitting on one side of the scale, while the other small room with the coffins is on the other side. The church is the fulcrum. The beam, rather than overhead, is actually under them.

Like so.

The way there can be two different rooms in seemingly one space is that one room is inside this “box” sitting on the scale dish, while the other room’s floor is the top of the “box”. Since each side of the scale has a long vertical tower wrapping around it, the casual observer wouldn’t see any difference in the box’s static walls vs the top of the box’s non-connected walls.

I told you it’s difficult to sort out verbally.

Anyway, this explains how the culprit was able to move around and confound them so easily: they used weight to change the rooms on either side of the scale to “disappear” and “remove” the body.

This chapter takes like a good ten pages going over the exact way this trick works, and other than a few pithy quips from Tsukiyo, you aren’t losing much, so here’s the tl;dr version:

Samidare and Black Cape start in the first room with Takezaki’s body. This room is on top of the box, because those three are heavier than Tsukiyo and Nazuna together, who are trapped in coffins on top of the opposite box.

Tsukiyo notes that of course this is the case.

The reason the two girls were confined to the coffins was to keep them within the little clearance gap at the top of the vertical shaft, and also to conceal the whole scales thing.

Samidare chases Black Cape across the beam of the scale.

Black Cape enters into the box on that side, meaning that now there’s three people’s weight to one dead body on the other side, so the culprit gets into an empty room to hide, that’s then pushed down the shaft and rendered inaccessible. 

The doors function like elevator doors and cannot be opened while the scale is in motion, so that’s why Samidare couldn’t get in right after Black Cape. 

When she entered into the room, it meant there were four people on one side of the scale and only a dead body on the other.

Ah, I know that you, eagle-eyed reader, are probably wondering how the scale didn’t even out while the three girls were searching the church. Shouldn’t the single culprit and the single dead body weigh about the same and reset the scale?

Well sure, it would, if the culprit hadn’t counted on that.

See, you need to remember that Tsukiyo and Nazuna were handcuffed at the hands and feet, and the key was around a statue of the Virgin Mary. A statue that Samidare refused to break to take the key and instead used a conveniently placed handtruck to carry it into the room with everyone else.

Yep. 

I’m impressed the culprit knew Samidare would be morally opposed to breaking a statue of the Virgin Mother--they really did their research.

So anyway, as you’d imagine, the Mary statue plus the culprit was enough to keep the box room with the corpse on top of it level with the hallway. Then the girls were tricked into trapping themselves by all going to see the body. (Which, again, was Naz’s suggestion.)

So yeah, here we are now.

The three girls are trapped, and the culprit is free.

That summed up everything that happened at Libra Girls’ Academy.

Was it possible to even make a building that worked like a scale? The Committee for the Salvation of Victims of Crime could probably do it. We were facing Shinsen Mikado and Ryuuzouji Gekka here. In fact, this is pretty much exactly what I’d expect from them.

“Wait, so the culprit gets to run away...and we’re just stuck here forever? That sucks! You solved the mystery and it didn’t get us anywhere!”

“Uh...right! Since we know there’s another room above us, couldn’t we break through the ceiling to escape?” I said, looking up at the ceiling.

It was over thirty meters high.

“It’s easy to say that, but how would we do it?”

“...Let’s try throwing a chair.”

((Ah yes, Samidare, take a page out of Nanamura’s book.))

I took the small chair beside the writing desk in my hands and tossed it above me. It clamored to the ground without even hitting the ceiling.

It would be really tough to throw something in the direct center of the ceiling. Besides, something as small as this chair probably would never reach it on its own.

“Looks like that won’t work.”

“Okay, how about this. Naz-chan, get on my shoulders.”

“Huh? Me?!”

“Yeah. Tsukiyo-chan’s got a lot of issues going on right now.”

“I appreciate your sympathy.”

I crouched down and Nazuna climbed up onto my shoulders. Careful to keep my balance and not drop her, I stood up.

“Woah, woah!” 

Nazuna seemed a little worried.

“Well?”

“I c-can’t reach it. Not at all.”

I wondered if maybe I could jump and reach that spot instead.

((YES! YES, PLOT-RELEVANT SAMIDARE JUMPS!!!))

I let Nazuna down, whose face looked like a little kid who’d just been lifted up for the first time. She mumbled “high, so high” to herself.

“Hey, what did you do to Naz? Her cheeks are on fire!”

“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything weird.”

“You’ve done nothing but weird stuff since you got here!”

“That’s not what we’re supposed to be worrying about now! Help me think of a way out.”

“I don’t think breaking through the ceiling is realistic,” Nazuna said, sitting flat on the floor. “It’s probably reinforced with concrete or thick beams. We’d need serious firepower if we wanted to break through it.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right…” I said, shoulders sagging.

“Ah, I just had a great idea,” Tsukiyo said, suddenly looking up. “What if all three of us jumped at the same time, and that made this side of the scale lighter so it would go up?”

“I mean sure, if we jumped it would be lighter while we were in the air, but I doubt the scale would move in the 0.1 seconds we were airborne.”

“Well we won’t know unless we try, right?”

“I mean I guess… Should we?”

“Nah, sounds like a pain,” Tsukiyo said, quickly abandoning her own plan and flopping onto the floor, going back to her withdrawn stage.

Nazuna sat beside her, her face twisted in thought about how to escape. It didn’t seem like she was having much luck.

I picked up the chair I’d thrown at the ceiling and sat in it.

I wanted to be out of here already.

I wanted to go home, to my dorm room.

I wanted to get back to my peaceful, normal life.

Normal, huh. 

I wondered if it would be possible to live a calm, normal life with Kirigiri without cases to solve. It was possible that even if we managed to establish some normalcy around us, she’d set off in search of her next case. 

Was there even anywhere for us to return home to?

“I’m hungry…” Tsukiyo said, starting once again to proclaim her desires to the room.

“I wonder what time it is…” Nazuna said, understandably losing steam herself.

“Don’t worry. My friends will definitely come save us. We all decided to check in by noon, so if they don’t hear from me, someone will come.”

“How many hours away is that?”

“Uh…”

“Don’t get my hopes up like this,” Tsukiyo said coldly, only her eyes pointed in my direction.

“Hey, by the way,” I said, hoping to change the topic. “Do you guys really not have any idea who the culprit could be? Even though we unraveled the trick, we still don’t know who the killer is. Do you guys know of anyone who might want Takezaki-san dead?”

“Obviously not! We were kidnapped by some weird pervert, weren’t we? It’s not like we’d hang out with anyone like that and not tell them to take a hike!” Tsukiyo said, starting to get upset.

“So you don’t know anything about Takezaki-san? No weird rumors or anything?”

“Weird rumors?”

“Ah,” Nazuna said. “Now that you mention it, I did hear something about her. That back in middle school, she drove one of her former friends to suicide…”

“The hell? I never heard that.”

“That’s because you don’t take any interest in our classmates, Tsukiyo-san…”

“Well duh, why would I? I only have eyes for you, Naz, hehe.”

“You really should expand your horizons, Tsukiyo-san.”

“What? You’re telling me that too, Naz? You sound just like my dad.”

“Hey, so, about Takezaki-san?”

“Well, I don’t have much interest in gossip myself, so I just passively listened, but apparently, Takezaki-san was being extorted for money by a classmate back in middle school. Then one day, the bully changed targets from her to some other girl, allegedly someone Takezaki-san was once close with. Rumor says that she paid 100,000 yen ($1000 roughly) for it. In reality, it was probably closer to the bully demanding 100,000 yen in order to focus on some other target, and she just complied. Eventually, the friend ended up killing herself.”

“That’s pretty tragic…”

“Seems like there was someone who wanted to make Takezaki-san out to be worse, so they exaggerated the rumor. Said things like Takezaki-san herself was the leader of the extortion group and such. There’s no way to tell what’s true and what isn’t.”

“Certainly seems sufficient as a motive,” I muttered to myself. “Perhaps it’s a school friend, or a relative… Can you think of anyone?”

“As I mentioned before, Takezaki-san and I weren’t exactly close…”

“Right… Oh wait, can you think of any Libras?”

“Libras? I don’t really remember other people’s zodiac signs.”

“Yeah, I guess not…”

“I know Naz’s zodiac sign. She’s a Leo! It’s the same sign as me. We match! Hehehe!”

It might have just been my imagination, but it seemed like Tsukiyo was starting to lose it. Maybe we’d been shut up in here for too long, and it was starting to take a mental toll.

That or she’s just threatened by your oblivious allure, Samidare.

This subplot is fantastic and I’m going to miss it when it’s over.

Soon after this conversation, everyone starts to feel weird, and the room begins to shake. They realize that the scale is moving, which is good in that it shows that they’re going to get out, but is bad, since the only one who knows how the scale works is the culprit. 

Samidare motions for Tsukiyo and Nazuna to move away from the door, and hoists the chair over her head to use as a weapon.

Then the door opens, and the person standing there is…

A man with the physique of a model, wearing an expensive suit and sunglasses.

“Ya-Yadorigi-san?” I said without thinking.

“Oh, Samidare-san,” he said back, as if we’d just bumped into each other on the street. “Good morning. Are you in the process of solving this case?”

“Huh? Uh, erm, I am, but…” What the heck was going on here? “What are you doing here, Yadorigi-san?”

“It’ll take a while to explain, so let’s chat over breakfast at a hotel or something. By the way, you aren’t hurt, are you? I know you must be exhausted.”

“I’m already tuckered out, for sure.”

“Those two behind you are connected to the case too?”

“Yeah.”

“Then have them join us for breakfast,” Yadorigi said with a smile.

Nazuna crept up behind me, whispering in my ear: “Is that man the Black Cape?”

“Huh, there’s no way…”

“You know each other?”

“We sure do, this is one of the other detectives in our group.”

“This is really strange, though. The only one who should know how to let us out is the culprit…”

“What? No!”

“Do you have something you need to discuss?” Yadorigi asked, offering an arm to escort us. “For now I think it’s best if we leave this room, no?”

“Oh right,” I said, then looked over my shoulder to whisper to the others. “We’ll be in trouble if we get trapped in here again, so let’s get out of here for now. Stay behind me.”

Nazuna and Tsukiyo nodded, and Yadorigi walked into the hallway.

The rest of us followed, finally taking a step off the dish of the scale. Despite that, I felt more confused than elated. Like there was something going on that was above my head.

((Hey, Samidare? I’m going to remind you that your Big Bad is a guy who can disguise himself real good.))

We followed down the hall, me carefully leaving thirty meters between us and Yadorigi. 

Finally, the hallway ended, and Yadorigi took a step into the church. He stopped and looked over his shoulder, waiting until we closed more of the distance between us before starting to walk again.

In the next moment, I saw a black shadow jump out from the left of my peripheral vision.

It was Black Cape.

I didn’t have time to yell out.

Black Cape brought the metal pipe down on Yadorigi’s head.

Fresh blood spurted everywhere.

I couldn’t even look away.

Yadorigi crumpled on the spot, falling to the ground as if dead.

I heard Tsukiyo and Nazuna scream behind me.

Black Cape’s hood was facing me.

I’ll never forgive you…

I’ll never forgive you!

Murderer!

“I’m Samidare Yui, the detective assigned to this case! You cannot hurt me!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “If you’re going to hurt someone, you’ll have to go through me. If you’re ready to face the consequences of breaking the rules, then come at me!”

I took a step toward Black Cape, who responded by taking a step back.

We faced off in the silent church, the smell of blood growing ever thicker. 

Black Cape held up the bloody pipe in a defensive stance and began to retreat.

“Running away?”

As soon as I said it, Black Cape stopped.

They seemed unsure, as if they hadn’t considered that this would happen.

“From here I can reach you in two steps,” I said, pointing to my feet. “If you turn to run, I’ll catch you immediately. If you want to fight, I’ll face you. Don’t you get it? You’ve already lost. Give up, and put down the pipe.”

Without noticing, we’d moved to the area closest to the entrance. So they were planning on running way. 

The door was on the left of where I was standing, the area where I saw Black Cape jump out to attack Yadorigi. I could see that the boards sealing up the door had already been removed. It was possible to leave.

I turned my attention there. That was likely where the culprit would try to flee.

On the other hand, the hallway leading to the coffin room was right behind them. It was equally possible that they might try to make a break for it and hide in that room like before.

“I’ve already figured out your trick. There’s nowhere to run,” I said. “All that’s left is to unmask you and make you confess.”

Black Cape’s identity…

I looked over the person before me again. Though the cape helped hide it, they were extremely small. They had to be a woman, or a child.

Who the hell?

((Samdiare…))

I couldn’t imagine a mystery where the culprit was someone who’d never been introduced before, but...I couldn’t think of anyone who it could be. Plus, the Libra Girls’ Academy case had just started, and it was possible that there were more murders planned.

Black Cape’s hood hid most of their face, but I could see their mouth.

It was smiling.

I felt as though I’d seen it somewhere before.

Mocking me, trying to taunt me.

((Samidare, come on...))

As soon as I thought that, Black Cape turned to make a break for the hallway.

“Ah!”

I was too slow!

I sprung from the floor.

I wouldn’t let them escape…

Just as I thought that, the culprit tripped and fell spectacularly. From inside the hood, a pair of glasses flew across the floor.

Glasses?

Whatever, now was my chance.

This entire time, I’d been chasing after the back of his black caped culprit, and now I was going to tackle them like I’d wanted to since the start.

As I lunged, Black Cape rolled first onto their side, then their back.

Shit!

A trap?

The hood back, our eyes met.

Black Cape grabbed my sleeve with their left hand and pulled, pressing the gun-like thing in their right hand against the left side of my chest.

“Gotcha,” she said.

It was a voice I’d heard before.

It was a face I’d seen before.

“Do you know what this is? It’s a nail gun. If I pull the trigger, it’ll stake you through the heart and turn you into a voodoo doll.”

“Why would you…”

It was one of the detectives in our group, Mizuiyama Sachi.

Ha! You thought it was Lico! But no!

The curse of Jess starting to like a seemingly unimportant character and them ending up evil strikes again!

Though still, Shinsen can disguise himself as anyone, so maybe check on Yadorigi to make sure he’s dead? Something?

But anyway hell yeah! This is the kind of shit I’m here for!

Chapter 1 The Mania of Existence: Location Unknown - Kirigiri Kyouko

Kirigiri Kyouko visiting the Center for the Research of Twin Abilities had thrown a huge wrench in Tsutsumi’s plan.

While before, he’d been on the defensive, it was now time to take the fight to his opponents. It didn’t matter if he used cowardly methods, so long as he won in the end. He needed that 561 million yen for clearing the game to start his new life, so there was merit in taking a few risks.

Kirigiri Kyouko was one tough opponent, but she was still just a little brat. Compared to an adult, her physical body was frail, which was why she’d sustained such serious injuries in the car accident while Tsutsumi got to walk away with some minor scrapes. Though there were no external wounds, she’d been knocked out cold and was still barely conscious. 

I’ll kill her, he thought, though once he calmed down he realized it was a bad idea. Even if he killed her, the game wouldn’t end, since his true opponent was not Kirigiri Kyouko, but Samidare Yui.

If that was the case, then there were better uses for the girl.

He wanted to limit his contact to the detective assigned to his murder case as much as possible, which was why his initial gambit was to try and bluff them out of investigating at all. The second the detective took a close look at his case, his chances of winning plummeted, so he needed to buy himself some time.

So what was the best way to combat the detective?

Just as he’d originally planned, the winning move was to get them to not even play...and he had the exact thing he needed to make that happen.

Kirigiri Kyouko--he’d use her as a hostage to control the detective on his case.

He was sure Kirigiri Kyouko and Samidare Yui shared a deep connection, so it should be possible to get the detective to back down this way. 

((oh, Tsutsumi, you have no idea))

If you want her to live, forfeit the game. Or if you don’t care about her life, then feel free to continue.

When it came down to it, which would Samidare Yui choose...?

Tsutsumi peeked behind him, where Kirigiri Kyouko was lying across the backseat. Her hands and feet were tied together with rope, her body bound in meters of tape. It seemed like she hadn’t quite regained her senses yet.

The problem now was finding a safe place to hide out while waiting for Samidare Yui to realize what had happened. 

Where could he go to stay safe...?

Ah, that’s right.

If he went there, it’d be safer than anywhere else.

Ruh-roh!