Chapter Five: Demo Playtest, Day Two, Investigation Time ①

Saturday, November 23rd, 2024, 7:00 A.M.

Kamo's sleep was shallow and restless.

In a lucid dream, he relived yesterday all over again.

...He left home early to catch the first Shinkansen.

Yukina was still asleep, so he was careful not to make a sound. Rena was still sleepy as he left.

"Be careful of traffic."

Rena was wearing a smartwatch on her left arm.

...The poisoned needle!

Kamo was startled, but the oblivious Rena had already shut the door with a smile. Even in his dreams, he was powerless.

In the blink of an eye, he had arrived at Okayama Prefecture and Port K.

The boat ride to Inunojima was 20 minutes. The weather was nice and the sea was calm.

Yuki fiddled with his cell phone next to him. He didn't say a word to Kamo until they entered Megalodon Manor.

After a while, Yuki got to his feet and walked towards the steps off the ferry. Kamo saw him and shouted "Don't go! Or else..."

But Yuki ignored him and got off the boat.

Director Juumonji, who he had gotten acquainted with while supervising the game, served as their guide.

Juumonji was average size but strong, with a round nose that made him look like a teddy bear.

Excluding the captain, there were seven people on the ferry, including Kamo and Juumonji. Seeing the smiling woman with almond eyes next to Juumonji, Kamo suddenly shuddered.

...That's right. Kurata Chikage was also on the ferry with us.

Suddenly, a question surfaced in his mind.

Is Juumonji Kurata's accomplice, or is he one of the staff she's kidnapped?

Although their interactions during his preparation had been brief, Kamo knew that Juumonji was a vibrant person who enlivened the atmosphere wherever he went, and everyone on the dev team liked him because when he was around, the work he supervised always went smoothly. That Juumonji, who was so cheerful and who'd organized a special feast in Kamo's honor... would he ever involve himself in something like this? Kamo hesitated to believe it.

The ferry dropped off Kamo and the other seven on Inunojima and left. And just like that, they were trapped on this diabolical island.

After that... the dream suddenly blurred until Kamo couldn't make anything out.

The smartwatch's alarm sounded sharply, and Kamo woke up.

Cream colored walls. This was his room in Megalodon Manor.

The time was already 7:15 A.M. Although he'd only slept two hours, his mind was unexpectedly clear.

After taking a shower to wash away the remains of his dream, Kamo quickly ate a rushed breakfast of just bread. The game ended at noon on the 24th... There was still a long road ahead.

But when he thought about what had happened just before the end of his time in VR, he lost his appetite.

At 2:50 A.M., Kurata had ordered everyone to log out and then back in again.

"Mystery Maker 2 is still in the developmental stage, so if players remain logged in for two whole days, it's prone to bugs. So I'm going to need you to all log out and back in now."

A bug is something in a game that occurs outside of the intended settings. Common bugs include things like characters getting stuck in walls and enemies not dying when they're supposed to. There have also been particularly nasty bugs that could delete an entire file.

"If a bug that violates the laws of physics occurs, then there's no way to ensure that the deduction game is still fair, right? So to avoid that, all players are required to log off once every day."

That was the first Kamo had heard of that rule.

Immediately after that, KENZAN asked a question over the voice chat.

"Does this rule also apply to the Murderer and the Executioner?"

"Of course. Your daily logouts can be performed at the save point. Oh, but those of you who've already been horribly murdered have done their logging off for day one."

That someone was MICHI, who was killed by Kamo.

Kurata continued "The most common type of bug is when a character goes through a wall or a locked door... But I can assure you that there are absolutely no bugs like that in this game! No matter what sort of weird motions you make in the real world, your character's body will definitely come to a stop when it hits a wall or door, it won't go through or get stuck halfway."

At that moment, AZUMA interjected.

"Then what sorts of bugs are there?"

"Please rest assured that, Murderer or Executioner, no one will never utilize bugs or glitches, wall penetration or otherwise, to commit crimes. In the event that a bug or glitch does occur during the course of the game, I promise to immediately notify everyone."

Kamo sat down on the dark gray armchair and took a sip of water.

It was the fifth time he'd saved since the start of the game. The water he'd initially poured in the glass was almost finished. The word "Saving..." popped up in the lower left corner of his vision.

All he had to do was log out of the game, return to the real world, then log back in again.

However, just as he thought that, the voice communication was filled by the sound of someone choking.

"Wh... What's going..."

There was a dull, heavy thud.

Kurata said in a sing-song voice "Oh, there's another victim."

Kamo's face turned white with fear... Did that voice just now sound a bit like Yuki?

"That just now happened in the VR space, right?"

He managed to force out his question, but Kurata's laugh shattered his hopes.

"Even though it's a VR time period, I never said people won't die in real life."

Kamo gasped in shock, and Kurata continued pitilessly "Don't panic, we'll see what happened come morning. For those of you who haven't completed today's logout, please do so and log back in immediately."

Kamo absentmindedly logged off and returned to the real world.

He sat inside the RHAPSODY with his lenses raised, his insides all confused. With a flick of his wrist, the screen of his smartwatch was illuminated, and he checked the time.

It was 3:00 A.M.

...Yuki, are you okay?

Another murmur from Kurata came to his ears.

"Excluding the one who lost her life during VR time... You're the only one who hasn't logged back in yet."

The implication seemed to be that if he refused to log in it would be considered a rule violation, but Kamo wasn't listening.

His mind went blank as he lowered the VR lenses and logged back in through pure muscle memory.

When he returned to his senses, he was already sitting back on the save point in VR space.

He only heard Kurata continuing to narrate "Everyone, welcome to the 23rd. The game has now officially entered its second day."

KENZAN asked a question.

"Hey, you didn't erase evidence of the VR crime while we were logged out, did you? As a game developer, I'm sure that would be easy for you."

"How could you accuse me of something like that? High schoolers these days really lack trust in their fellow man. This building accurately reflects 'the condition of the interior of Puppet Hall saved at 3:00 A.M. on the 23rd', and I wouldn't lie about something like that. Otherwise, how could we call this a detective game?"

As far as Kamo knew, no matter what game it is, when the player logs in, the system reads the last save made before exiting.

The doors, windows, furniture, and items (including virtual corpses and all traces thereof) in this building were the same as they were in Puppet Hall when Kamo logged off. Since Kurata had asserted it as Gamemaster, they should be able to trust that.

Kurata continued with a grin "Then, for now, please take some time to rest. I don't mind if it's in VR or the real world, as long as you don't leave your room you can do whatever you like. Starting at 8:00 A.M. Tomorrow will be what everyone's been waiting for, VR Investigation Time!"

***

It was almost 8:00 A.M. now.

The sunlight pouring in through the window made Kamo squint his eyes as he put on his VR operation suit and glove controllers. He kept thinking as he completed his synchronization with the RHAPSODY.

...Was that voice being strangled really Yuki's?

However, Kamo had another worry.

The character at the biggest disadvantage in this game was without doubt the Murderer.

Every time he committed a crime he risked another failure, and even if he succeeded, he still had to avoid getting found out by the Detectives. Not only that, but if he was found out, he'd be punished harder than any other player.

There must have been a reason why Kurata, who already hated detectives, had specifically picked him out to play the Murderer.

Kamo had faith in his memory. He remembered basically everything he'd ever seen and he never forgot the face of someone he knew. He was certain that the first time he ever met Kurata Chikage was when he was invited to this demo playtest.

Despite that, Kamo sensed a certain persistence in Kurata. "I, for one, am most eagerly looking forward to seeing you flailing in desperation." When she'd said that, her voice sounded extremely abnormal.

...Why is she so obsessed with me?

***

Thinking about it, it was almost 8:00 A.M., so Kamo entered the VR space.

He first looked at his avatar's right hand.

The bleeding had stopped, but the wounds on his fingers were still evident. It was hard evidence that exposed him as the murderer.

With a soft sigh, he walked out of the room and crossed the corridor with heavy steps.

The moment he opened the door to the main hall, Kamo froze. For all that lay before him was darkness.

At first he thought all the lights in the building had gone out.

As the Murderer, Kamo had the authority to extinguish all light in the stage of the incident. He suspected that the Executioner, who also had that permission, had done it to make the scene invisible to everyone.

But he quickly remembered that could only be done during Crime Time. And upon further inspection, everything was still normal in the corridors of the northern section; the lights there were on.

...What's going on here? Only the lights in the main hall are out? I remember they were on at midnight, so why are they off now?

The only source of light in the room was from the model a ways away, dim glow emanating from the miniature windows.

The darkness in the hall was impossibly thick, possibly because outside of Puppet Hall was nothing but a void.

Because there was no starlight or moonlight outside, the interior was plunged into a darkness that couldn't be experienced in the real world. Although there were cat flaps in the doors, they were covered by black plastic, and the light from the corridor and the other rooms could barely penetrate them.

KENZAN, who'd come from behind Kamo, also stared wide-eyed.

"Hey, did someone on the criminal's side turn off the lights?"

"Seems that way."

Kamo fumbled and pressed the switch to the left of the room's door.

All the wall sconces went on at the same time, and MUNAKATA, who'd coincidentally just come from the southern section, squinted. It was just after 8:00, and Kamo and the others were the first ones to arrive.

MUNAKATA looked at the round table and crossed his arms.

"I see... Two people were killed."

There were two puppets on the round table.

One was a female puppet that looked similar to Michi and wore a tuxedo. The puppet had a silk thread wrapped around its neck. The other looked like a king with a wine glass in his raised right hand, and looked a bit like Yuki. The corners of both puppets' mouths were stained red, and their limbs were twisted at unnatural angles to their bodies.

After looking at the dolls, KENZAN frowned.

"One was strangled and the other was poisoned, right?"

Kamo had strangled MICHI, and the person who placed the puppets knew that... No doubt, this was the Executioner's doing.

He looked over at MUNAKATA and felt a sudden cramp in his stomach.

MUNAKATA was checking the door to the southern corridor and yanked something off the knob. He must have been recovering the blade he'd planted.

...No, there's no point in focusing on MUNAKATA's actions now. Whatever happens, I just have to go with the flow.

While he waited for the others to arrive, Kamo decided to take a look at the light switch.

The building had wide switches, and he eyeballed the button as being about 10 cm x 4 cm.

Just a moment ago, Kamo had pressed the switch on the north side... He'd been wearing Investigator's Gloves at the time, so if there were any traces on the switch, they must have been left by the Executioner.

KENZAN, who'd started checking the switch at the same time, made a regretful face.

"There aren't any traces."

"Yeah. What about the other switches..."

Kamo looked around and realized there were only two light switches in the room, one on the north side and one on the south.

"Okay, let's take a look at the switch on the south side then."

After saying that, Kamo went towards the other side of the main hall.

The shelves to the left of the door were cluttered with puppets. The south side was the only one in the hall to have shelves of puppets on it, and the two on the round table should have been taken from there as well. Kamo remembered that during last night's VR investigation time, MUNAKATA had closely investigated those shelves.

To the right of the door was the model.

The moment he saw it, Kamo realized that the roof had been lowered, so the inside of the model was no longer visible. He remembered the interior of the model was still visible at midnight, so someone had lowered the roof after then.

But what was the point of that...?

Kamo kept that info in mind as he went to look at the light switch on the wall on the model's side of the room. A moment later, he heard KENZAN whistle.

There was a large black stain on the switch on the south side, and... the imprints of a thumb, index, and middle finger were visible on the stain, is if someone had pressed the switch panel with their right hand.

"These fingerprints should have been left by someone on the perpetrator's side, I just don't know what this black smudge is."

Kamo muttered, and KENZAN grinned.

"Whatever it is, it's a strong clue."

Kamo turned to inform everyone of their discovery, but was instantly shaken. MUNAKATA was checking the door to the northern section of the building, which no longer had the utility knife blade on it, and should have nothing left but congealed glue. MUNAKATA nodded in satisfaction as he tore something off the round knob.

As he left his room, Kamo put on the white Investigator's Gloves to cover the wound.

But he'd only had them on for a few moments before bloodstains faintly oozed to the surface of the glove. MUNAKATA must have noticed that he was injured by now.

It was only a matter of time before MUNAKATA would expose Kamo.

How long would the calm before the storm last? This false calm... It hurt Kamo more than any confrontation could have.

Soon, AZUMA came in via the northern corridor.

With her joining, there were still only four people inside the hall. YUKI still hadn't arrived, and Kamo was starting to grow uneasy.

...Could it be that the voice I heard at 3:00 really was Yuki?

Just then, KENZAN sighed and muttered "We're still missing Mr. Yuki, Ms. Michi, and Mr. Fuwa, we'd better check out their rooms."

"I don't want to stay here, I want to go check on them in the real world... But that crazy woman said we can't go back to the real world during the VR Investigation Time. She's so overbearing!" AZUMA complained.

KENZAN reached for the door to the northern section and said "Let's split up. I'll check Fuwa's room first..."

The moment he touched the doorknob, someone suddenly pushed the door open, nearly knocking KENZAN to the floor.

"Ah, sorry... I didn't expect anyone to be there."

FUWA stood in the doorway with a tired look on his face.

"What took you so long?" MUNAKATA asked pointedly.

FUWA smiled in a pained way.

"I have low blood pressure so it's really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning, plus ever since I stepped into Puppet Hall this morning I've had this heavy feeling. I can't breathe if I move even a little, and my ears are ringing."

FUWA was in fact breathing a bit strange. KENZAN stifled a yawn and said "Actually, it's the same for me."

"It's probably prolonged stress and lack of sleep. I fell asleep in a daze and dreamed I was being attacked by living mushrooms, although that's still better than being attacked by tofu."

Listening to FUWA, it sounded like he had dreams like that often. Kamo had never had such strange dreams, so maybe Fuwa was the sort of person who was serious on the surface but had wild ideas in his head.

AZUMA spoke up with a generous amount of worry. "Are you okay? Don't push yourself, you should get some rest."

"It's okay, my blood pressure will sort itself in no time. Don't start talking about me yet..."

"I'm fine, even though I'm a ghost."

At some point, MICHI had appeared in the door to the southern section.

She looked the same except for the angelic halo over her head, which was the sign that her character was a ghost.

Looking at MICHI, who didn't resemble an angel so much as a demon, FUWA smiled.

"I'm glad to see you're alright."

"The moment my avatar was killed, the system kicked me out... Then I just waited around in the real world. Didn't they say we weren't starting until 3:00 A.M. the next day? I waited until then before logging back on and returning to my room. But, well, I was already a ghost by then."

Kamo had been counting on the ghosts having login restrictions to explain why YUKI hadn't arrived yet. Now that MICHI was here, that last glimmer of hope was dashed.

The worst case scenario flashed through his head, and he couldn't hold back anymore. "Let's go check on Yuki, he's probably in his room–"

"What's the point of rushing now?" MUNAKATA grunted.

"What do you mean?"

"You should know that perfectly well, Kamo. The fact that Yuki hasn't appeared in the hall at this time of day means he was most likely killed in the real world... No matter how much you hurry, it's already too late."

That might have been true, but Munakata's impersonal declaration still left Kamo speechless. AZUMA was the first one to find words for her anger.

"Forget it! Let's ignore someone like that and hurry to YUKI's room."

She stomped towards the southern corridor, and Kamo hurried after her.

YUKI's room was on the far end of the southern corridor on the left side.

They knocked on the door, but there was no response from inside. KENZAN bit his lip.

"There don't seem to be any spare keys, so we'll have to break it down."

Kamo and KENZAN combined their efforts kicking at the door until it finally loosened. Finally, the lock broke and the duo went crashing into YUKI's room.

The guests rooms were all laid out similarly.

The bathroom, bedroom, and number of puppets were all the same... the only difference was that the configuration of the furniture in this room was mirrored left-right relative to Kamo's.

AZUMA, who was the first to see into the room, gasped.

YUKI's fallen body leaned over the save point.

There was a streak of vomit near his mouth, and his face was twisted and bloodless.

KAMO realized when he'd killed MICHI that the bodies in "Delicious Death for Detectives" didn't have their presentations softened. For Kamo, the body was infinitely close to what he'd seen back in "The Deadly Tragedy of Shino". It was eerily realistic.

FUWA's face screwed up as he muttered "Mr. Yuki really did become a victim..."

Kamo ran over to YUKI and lifted his arm.

The bodies of people who died in the game were no longer recognized as characters controlled by players, and if Yuki had been killed in the real world, that wouldn't have frozen his character. Therefore, even if he could move YUKI's arm, that didn't tell him whether or not Yuki was safe in the real world.

The ghost of MICHI knelt next to the corpse and asked a question.

"Is this a poisoning? Could it have been in the water?"

Kamo didn't answer, but lightly touched YUKI's carotid artery in an attempt to determine if his avatar was still alive.

Then... the save point began to glow.

Kamo was startled, and MICHI next to him reacted even more.

She seemed particularly easy to surprise, and she let out a horrid scream as she stepped back and bumped into AZUMA, who was behind her. AZUMA, who was sitting on the bed, was fine, but MICHI couldn't control her body and faceplanted into the pile of puppets piled in the corner of the room.

"Are... Are you okay?"

The man who asked that in a confused voice was another YUKI who had appeared on the dark gray armchair.

He had an angel halo hanging over his head and looked at MICHI, who was struggling in the puppet pile, with a complicated facial expression.

Before this scene occurred, a line of text had appeared in the corner of Kamo's vision.

The death of Aoba Yuki's character has been confirmed by a third party... Ghost YUKI has been released.

***

Kamo felt a deep relief and looked at Yuki with a painful smile.

"Thank God, you worried me half to death."

"I'm really sorry. The system wouldn't let me log in... but I heard all of you through voice chat, so I'm pretty sure I know what's been going on."

He gave a rare apologetic look and shrank into his own body. MUNAKATA folded his arms and whispered "Kurata, come out here. Why were the release times of MICHI and YUKI's ghosts different?"

A laugh echoed from somewhere.

"How lame, can our great detective not even figure that out?"

Murderous rage flashed in MUNAKATA's eyes. He inhaled, but YUKI cut him off before he could speak.

"The reason my ghost couldn't be released was because you wanted to emphasize that my room was an impossible locked room without even my own ghost left inside... right?"

"That's right. Wouldn't it be a waste of a good locked room mystery if the ghost of the victim appeared in the room before someone broke in from the outside? In the future, anyone who is killed in their own room must have a third party confirm their character's death in order to release their ghost, that is, give them permission to log back in to the VR space."

By now, MICHI had managed to get up from the mass of puppets.

The puppets were all dressed in modern styles, mostly white collar types interspersed with a few holding fishing rods, paintbrushes, or shovels.

She kicked the axe that had fallen to the floor back into the pile of puppets and spoke as if to cover up her shame. "So that's it. I wasn't killed in my own room so you didn't have to worry about me exposing the locked room, so I was released early."

Meanwhile, AZUMA, who was sitting on the bed, gave a wry smile and said "This room doesn't have any windows, and the door is the only way in or out. At a cursory glance, setting aside the autolock, even the thumbturn lock is locked, right?"

Hearing her, Kamo turned his head to look at the damaged door and its frame.

The door lock had been completely destroyed, and the swing bar had come loose, but judging from the exposed latch, her analysis was correct.

Kamo nodded and spoke. "Well, it's double locked. The swing bar was set. And there's no sign of tampering on the thumbturn."

"The second lock can only be locked by turning it from the inside... I'm afraid double locking the room from the outside would be very difficult."

FUWA waved his hands and said "Forget all that for a moment, let's hear the victim's story. Mr. Yuki, please tell us what happened last night."

The ghost of YUKI looked for a moment at his own corpse with disgust, then began to explain.

"It was about three in the morning when we received instructions to log out and back in, wasn't it? I was saving before logging off, but I was surprised to feel a sudden tightness in my throat as soon as I drank the water... immediately followed by my entire body locking up so tight I couldn't move."

Kamo nodded.

"That was probably the VR operation suit. That thing covers up to the neck, I guess it inflated with an airbag to apply pressure to your neck, then the whole body."

Hearing that explanation, YUKI smiled embarrassedly.

"Thinking about it calmly, you're right, of course. But at the time, I felt like I was trapped in the real world as well, and I was very alarmed."

Nobody could remain calm in a situation like that.

As a matter of fact, Kamo had been frightened for quite a while after taking just a minor injury to his fingertips in the VR space. It was hard to understand the fear that came from getting hurt without actually experiencing it.

A cup rolled on the floor in front of the body. Needless to say, it was the cup used for saving.

...Kurata claimed the idea was to recreate classic save systems, but in the end, it was just facilitating another way of killing by forcing them to drink.

YUKI, who was also staring at the cup of water, suddenly made a strange face. He flipped his body over to check the other side, then tilted his head.

"...It's not there."

"What's not there?"

AZUMA asked, and YUKI replied with a frown "I always refill my glass before I drink, and I did it the same way before I was poisoned."

"So according to you, there should still be water left in the cup, right? In that case, the poison might not have been in the pitcher, but poured directly into your cup."

"I think that's very likely... Moreover, I only took a sip after pouring it full to the brim, so when the cup fell, the remaining water should have spilled on my clothes and the floor, but there's no water left in the cup, and my clothes and the floor are almost completely dry."

Just as YUKI said, the water cup was empty and the floor showed almost no signs of dampness. Just to be sure, Kamo also touched the body's clothes, and found that even the area around the chest, which had been on the floor and was hard to dry, was just barely damp.

Kamo put the corpse back down and sighed "You're right."

"I've only been dead for five hours, this dried out way too fast. Is the humidity in Puppet Hall set super low?"

KENZAN seemed uninterested in YUKI's questions as he examined the pitcher on the lower shelf. "...How did the murderer poison it?"

FUWA listened with a blank expression.

"Huh? What's strange about it? The murderer put the poison in Mr. Yuki's pitcher before the game started. Although the scene looks like a locked room murder, that's actually just because Mr. Yuki himself locked the door."

KENZAN shook his head firmly.

"Impossible. We all drank water to save before Crime Time, right? And we should have done it a few times after that to return to the real world. Mr. Yuki wasn't poisoned at that time, so it's safe to assume that the poison was added during VR Crime Time."

He paused, then turned to YUKI and asked him "When was the last time you saved without getting poisoned?"

"It was when I returned to the real world... about thirty minutes after midnight, I poured myself a full glass of water and took a sip, and nothing happened. So we can conclude that the poison was added sometime after 12:30 at night."

"You didn't do anything stupid like letting another player into your room, did you?"

A normal person would be upset to be asked something like that by a high school student. But YUKI instead made a face that showed he found it amusing.

"I wasn't going to do anything like that, we'd already been told that the Murderer would be acting soon. When I returned to my room I made sure to lock the door and set the swing bar, and I even checked that pile of puppets to make sure there wasn't anything suspicious in the room. And I can also assure you that I didn't let anyone else into the room."

Hearing that, AZUMA rested her plump cheek in her left hand and said "That said, as long as there's any way to enter the room, it's not really hard to poison the water when Mr. Yuki isn't there to see, is it?"

"It should be easy to poison me if you just look for a gap when I'm off in the real world. I left for the real world to use the bathroom at 12:30 and came straight back... The time I was out of VR space was about five minutes."

"Five minutes is plenty of time to poison someone. In this incident, the 'how' of how they poisoned the water doesn't seem too important. But there's no way to continue the investigation without figuring out how the murderer entered the locked room."

Listening to the two of them talking, FUWA's face darkened and he muttered "It's too hard... I thought it was just a simple poisoning incident, I didn't expect things to get so complicated."

Meanwhile, KENZAN asked another question to YUKI.

"Was there anything unusual in your room after the start of VR Crime Time?"

"That's right, I remember I thought there was movement in the corridor around 12:50."

"Movement?"

At that moment, MUNAKATA took over.

"I heard it too. At that time there was a knocking sound coming from the corridor that lasted for about a minute."

YUKI nodded vigorously.

"I was writing and drawing things to help myself think, so I thought I'd just ignore it. But that sound just went on for far too long, so I stepped outside to have a look. A few moments later, Mr. Munakata came into the hallway too, so we checked around together."

Kamo looked down at the paper on the table.

On the paper, there were drawings of puppets and the MegalodonSoft logo, as well as several marks left by broken pencil tips, showing YUKI had exerted quite a bit of force at the time.

...Looking at it, it looked like he wasn't actually thinking and was just drawing.

Kamo let out a long sigh. KENZAN stared at the map from his watch as he continued to ask questions. "Ms. MICHI's room is also in the southern section, but she's the only one who didn't come out, didn't you find that strange?"

"No. Whether you come out or not is a personal choice, I guess."

MUNAKATA finished with a shrug, and MICHI smiled bitterly.

"Actually, I'd already been killed and logged out by then."

KENZAN turned back to YUKI.

"You only investigated the corridor?"

"We also went into ROPPONGI's room to look around, but we didn't find anything out of the ordinary. I also checked the main hall with Mr. MUNAKATA... but someone had turned off the lights and gave us quite a scare."

Kamo interjected immediately. "What? The lights in the hall were turned off at 12:50?"

"Yes. So we turned them back on to check, then turned them off and went back to our rooms. The time in the corridor and the hall added up to about ten minutes, I think. Of course, that was the only time I left my room."

MUNAKATA aggressively added "For the record, I was against turning the lights back off, that was 100% Yuki's doing."

"I thought if the lights in the main hall were turned off by the Murderer, we shouldn't have disrupted their plans... Anyway, at that time we found a black cloth on the carpet near the dollhouse, remember, Mr. Munakata? You picked it up."

MUNAKATA pulled out a piece of black cloth from his left pants pocket.

"This is it. The system shows it with the name 'Mystery Cloth Piece'."

Kamo looked at it and his heart skipped a beat.

After he'd been cut by the utility knife's blade, Kamo had opened the drawer underneath the dollhouse to check the items inside. At the time he was still slightly panicked... he must not have noticed that a piece of the cut Crime Glove had dropped off at that time.

...Now's when Munakata is going to reveal the truth about the trap he set on the doorknob, isn't it?

Kamo steeled his resolve and waited for the hammer to fall, but MUNAKATA didn't say anything and just smiled. ...It looked like Kamo was going to have to suffer listening to that time bomb tick for a while longer.

FUWA folded his arms and nodded several times.

"Eventually we'll be able to find out what that piece of cloth is, but right now I'm more concerned with what the state of the round table was at the time."

YUKI responded to that firmly. "There weren't any puppets on the round able when we checked the main hall at 12:50. Although we don't know who the Executioner is, they must have placed the puppets after that."

AZUMA raised a question.

"When you were investigating the corridor, could someone have slipped into your room or thrown some poison in while the door was open?"

"That's not possible. After I left the room, I double checked that the autolock had locked. At that time, Ms. Michi should have already been logged out, and Mr. Munakata didn't make any suspicious moves while he was in the corridor."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

Why were the lights in the main hall turned off? Why had the roof of the model been lowered? The number of details they couldn't make sense of kept on increasing.

...When he was coming up with his crime plan, Kamo had made a point to design ostentatious tricks that could only be performed in a virtual space. If Kurata had done the same, this could prove to be an extraordinary case.

***

"It's time to investigate the death of MICHI, that is, me, next, right?" the ghost of MICHI said cheerily.

"I was attacked in the storeroom. But save that for the main course and go somewhere else first. I don't know what happened after I died, maybe they moved my body out of the storeroom."

Her proposal was strange, but as it happened, Kamo wanted to investigate the entire building, so he didn't object.

The group left YUKI's room and went to check ROPPONGI's room first to make sure there wasn't anything unusual in it. Then they took a cursory glance around the main hall before proceeding to the foyer.

The door that "led out" of Puppet Hall was metal and looked very heavy, more like a vault door than anything. There was a thick latch on it and the window to the right was shrouded darkness.

KENZAN stared out the window and muttered "There's really nothing out there..."

Just then, Kamo caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye. He looked to the left side of the door and barely stifled a scream – a black glove was on the floor of the foyer.

The glove lay on the brown floor tiles. It looked familiar. It was one of the Crime Gloves Kurata had given out.

AZUMA also spotted the glove and reached down to pick it up.

"What's this? The color and material are different from the Investigator's Gloves."

The glove she'd picked was for a right hand. KENZAN smiled knowingly and said "Since none of us Detectives have ever seen it before, that means it was dropped by someone with a killing role, right?"

...At least it isn't mine, Kamo thought darkly, since I brought my glove back to my room. Could it have been dropped by the Executioner?

Kamo took the glove from AZUMA's hand and examined it carefully. The glove was so worn that the non-slip layer was about to peel right off. The entire glove was covered in wood shavings and tattered black fibers.

Unfortunately, the glove, like Kamo's, was a generic, universal size due to its stretchy material, so it was impossible to deduce who it belonged to by the size.

At MUNAKATA's suggestion, they compared the glove to the piece of black cloth they'd picked up in the main hall.

That piece of cloth had come from Kamo's glove, so the result was obvious... Both were made of the same material.

After some discussion, it was decided that MUNAKATA would hold on to the cloth and YUKI could keep the glove.

It was unanimously ruled that YUKI, who had been in a state of forced logout ever since he'd died in his room, was the least likely person to be the glove's owner.

YUKI put the glove in his left pants pocket and then stared at something.

"Ah, the rest of you might not be able to see it. The moment I put the glove in my pants pocket, the system showed it in my inventory as an item called 'Crime Glove (Right Hand)'."

MUNAKATA also stared at empty space and said "The name of my piece of cloth just got updated, too, now it's called 'Fragment of Crime Glove'."

That was all information Kamo hadn't known. However, like this, it should have been able to prove if a Detective's deductions lined up with the facts.

Next, they moved as a group to the unoccupied room in the northern section.

This was the only room in the northern section that could be called a common area. ...Naturally, MICHI's body wasn't in the unoccupied room.

The next room they checked was the laundry room, which naturally contained several washers and dryers.

There wasn't any detergent or fabric softener, though. That lack of detergent... If clothes got dirty in the course of a crime, it would be difficult to remove the stains. It seemed in the future, he would have to be careful not to shed blood while committing crimes.

Bath towels, pillowcases, sheets, and other items were piled up on shelves deeper in the room, so it seemed this place doubled as a linen room.

Finally, Kamo and the others walked towards the kitchen. Nobody had spoken in a while, and Kamo dragged his heavy body onward with reluctance.

The kitchen had a sink, stove, refrigerator, and several cabinets.

The cabinets contained several spice jars lying haphazardly around, there were a number of plates and empty bottles thrown in the sink, and neatly stacked plastic crates in one corner of the room contained bottled natural water.

Walking past the water bottles, they arrived at the door to the storeroom.

All of the building's interior doors were wooden, except for the storeroom door, which was iron and sturdy.

YUKI walked up to the door and tried to turn the round knob, but found that the small wheel underneath it was set to "closed". The door was equipped with an integrated lock, which could be rotated to lock the door.

Generally, that kind of lock could also be used as a door handle, and was a strong yet simple design, often used on areas that required soundproofing like recording studios.

But the door in front of them was a humble storeroom, and already had an ordinary round doorknob.

YUKI turned the wheel to the "open" position then turned the knob, but only responded with a confused look.

"Huh? Even though I unlocked it, it's still catching on something and I can't open it."

AZUMA crossed her arms and pursed her lips as she looked at the wall.

"Mr. Yuki and Ms. Michi are both ghosts, can't they just go through the walls and take a look?"

"How could we!? If there was a bug like that, the whole concept of the deduction game would break."

"Didn't Kurata say we can only do the same things as normal characters?"

That was consistent with the information about ghosts that Kamo had been given while he was helping to prepare the game, so he should have been able to trust it regarding YUKI and MICHI as well.

KENZAN had already started checking the storeroom door.

"It opens a few millimeters if you push it hard enough, so I think something is blocking it from the inside."

"Let me see."

AZUMA appeared to suspect that YUKI and KENZAN were only pretending that they couldn't open the door. But... she was wrong. AZUMA pushed the door herself and found that she could only open it a crack that you could have barely fit a ruler through. She tried to look through the crack, but no luck. She had to leave the door.

FUWA saw her like that and smiled bitterly.

"Guess we'll have to break it down again."

This time, Kamo chose not to help the group break down the door. He retreated to the back of the kitchen with KENZAN and YUKI to see how the rest of the group would open the iron door.

The trouble was... MUNAKATA didn't move at all.

He may have already recognized that Kamo was the one who "killed" MICHI. And somehow, Kamo could guess how he'd figured it out.

MUNAKATA had set a trap on the doors, which he naturally couldn't have hidden from the eyes of Kurata, who monitored the entire game. They could assume that the Executioner was warned of the trap as the Gamemaster's accomplice. That was within MUNAKATA's expectations.

...In other words, the trap was only aimed at the Murderer.

Kamo looked down at his right hand, which was still oozing blood.

Earlier, MUNAKATA had immediately gone to check the doors to the northern and southern sections to see if the traps had been triggered, and then removed the hidden blades.

By now, MUNAKATA should have already been able to deduce that Kamo wasn't the one who'd killed YUKI.

The person who killed YUKI added the poison during VR Crime Time. And that person had also made a loud racket in the corridor to lure YUKI and the others out of their rooms. Both of those things were hard to do remotely, so the person who killed YUKI had either entered the southern section during Crime Time or been there from the beginning.

If Kamo had killed YUKI, the first thing he would have had to do was go to the southern section to commit the crime, where he would have triggered the trap on the southern door and been injured. But in reality, only the trap on the northern door had been triggered.

MUNAKATA probably combined all of those clues together and deduced that "Kamo's most likely the one who killed MICHI."

When the group threw themselves into the door for the second time, the sound of something falling to the ground came from the other side. Kamo had been suffering from a slight ringing in his ears all morning, which combined with his extreme fatigue to make the sound unbearable.

By the time he returned to his senses, KENZAN and YUKI were gone. He smiled.

...So far, everything has gone according to plan.

KENZAN and YUKI rushed into the storeroom in unison, and in unison they tripped and fell on a huge orange object. AZUMA noticed what the object was and froze.

"A... A rubber boat?"

Behind the door they'd forced open, there was indeed an orange rubber dinghy.

The rubber dinghy was leaking air, and it released a wheezing noise as YUKI got to his feet on top of it.

KENZAN grimaced and rubbed his head as he said "I remember seeing this rubber boat yesterday during Investigation Time. I'm pretty sure it was folded up and placed on the shelf in the storeroom back then."

Kamo had prepared the rubber dinghy that could carry two people. Despite the air it had lost, it was still the size of a single bed's blanket. As for the weight, it should have been over six kilograms.

YUKI dragged the rubber boat into the kitchen, and the walnut shelf underneath was revealed.

The shelf had fallen to the floor. It looked very old, and the surface of the wooden boards was stained slightly.

"I see, that noise just now was this shelf falling over."

So saying, FUWA walked forward to inspect the shelf, but was startled by a scream from AZUMA.

In front of AZUMA's eyes – deep in the storeroom on the left hand side – a person lay on their back.

Needless to say, it was MICHI's corpse.

Her face had turned purple, and a rope was still wrapped around her neck, leaving clear strangulation marks. There was a streak of blood on her chest where she'd bled from her nose, and a little extra blood from both ears.

The body was so realistic it was hard to believe they were still in VR.

The ghost of MICHI immediately ran over.

"My corpse is just too bad, even my ears are bleeding."

YUKI laughed and replied "No, my poisoned one should be even worse."

"How could it be? Look at me, I'm..."

Seeing the two victims competing over whose corpse looked worse, Kamo couldn't help but laugh. At the same time, he felt a new surge of relief that the real people were still safe.

A water stain gradually spread out on the concrete floor, flowing from the fallen shelf.

The shelf was almost empty, except for two crates of natural water on the bottom shelf. Naturally, that was something Kamo had set up. The glass bottles had broken when the shelf fell to the ground, and the water flowed out from there.

"...Anyway, let me start with what happened when I was killed."

MICHI took the initiative and began airily.

There was a card in my room that said 'Go to the storeroom at 10:15 P.M.'. I knew it was an instruction from one of the killing roles, but I went anyway."

"Why didn't you ignore it? You might have prevented the crime." MUNAKATA asked pointedly.

MICHI looked shocked that he'd asked.

"How... How could you even ask something like that?"

MUNAKATA tried to reply, but MICHI cut him off before he'd even opened his mouth.

"The one who left me that card was probably the Murderer. If my character dies, that doesn't mean anything, but if the Murderer fails to carry out their role they'll be killed for real."

"Be reasonable. Which is better, sacrificing the Murderer or the whole lot of us dying in here?"

"...You aren't human."

"I don't want to hear that from an actual criminal."

MICHI shrugged and said to the group "I carefully made my way to the storeroom, and after I investigated in there for a while, my whole body suddenly went cold, and then I suddenly became extremely heavy, as though my entire body were being smothered... Before I even realized it, I couldn't control my character anymore."

Almost everyone looked intensely at MICHI, with the exception of MUNAKATA. His eyes never once left Kamo.

Kamo prayed he wouldn't see his inner turmoil and lifted his watch, pretending to check the map. It was now after 9:00 A.M.

AZUMA, who had been holding her face in deep thought, spoke up. "You couldn't move your body... Were you also poisoned?"

"Maybe. I wiped my mouth and nearly died of shock when my hand came back covered in blood. I don't know if it was from me vomiting blood or my nosebleed... but I have a feeling it would have been a nosebleed."

"Then your character died and your were forced to log off."

AZUMA tried to summarize, but MICHI shook her dead, denying her.

"No, my character didn't die right away. That state of me being unable to move lasted a while while I was still logged on. I'd say it was about three minutes. Then I felt my neck tighten again, and it wasn't long after that I was forced to log off. I didn't see the murderer the whole time."

AZUMA looked at the rope around the body's neck and grimly said "So you were strangled from behind."

"It's hard to say... It could also be that the poison was just slow to act and took a while to kill me. All I know is that after I died, my body was moved."

Saying that, MICHI pointed to the bloodstains on the concrete floor. There were traces in them of the body being dragged.

"The place where I originally collapsed was at the far end of the room, directly across from the door. As you can see, the trail of my nose blood extends from there to where I am now, so the culprit should have moved me to the east side of the storeroom."

FUWA examined the rubber boat on the floor and asked "Was the body moved so the shelf wouldn't hit it when it fell?"

MICHI grinned at FUWA.

"Whatever the reason, the key to this case seems to lie in how the locked room was created."

"I feel the same way. But when you were called to the storeroom, this shelf wasn't placed in such an usual place, right?"

"Yeah, it wasn't here."

MICHI started walking around the storeroom. The shelves against the walls were covered in a thin layer of dust. Because the shelves themselves were brown with a blackish-purple tinge, the dust was easy to see.

Most of the shelves were empty, with only the occasional rusty tool or broken kitchen utensil. The most eye-catching thing about the storeroom wasn't the shelves, but the puppets on top of them.

The puppets in the storeroom were mostly non-human creatures, including vampires, werewolves, bloody nurses, and so on... Hundreds of the small dolls were amassed into a creepy display. The inhuman beings posed in a variety of ways looked down on the group.

Kamo couldn't suppress a shudder.

Those puppets hadn't been there when he was rehearsing, they must have been another of Kurata's cruel additions.

A few moments later, MICHI stopped at the right hand wall (relative to someone standing in the doorway facing in).

There were no puppets on the shelves along the northern wall, and one of the shelves near the door was missing.

"I remember when I entered the storeroom last night, the shelves on this wall were covered with puppets... The shelf on the floor should have been here originally. Someone used this shelf and a rubber dinghy to block the door."

KENZAN frowned and muttered "But why?"

MICHI have him a surprised look.

"Huh? To make the crime scene into a locked room, of course."

KENZAN poked his temples with his index finger and continued. "Sorry, I'm better at solving the sorts of minor mysteries that come up in everyday life, I'm not very good at these sorts of meticulously planned crimes... But if someone creates a locked room, the reason is either to 'fake a suicide' or 'frame someone else for the crime', right? Otherwise there's no point."

MICHI pondered that for a moment.

"Makes sense. But looking at the situation, this is obviously a murder. And I don't see anything that would result in someone being framed."

"That's right, at first glance, this locked room is quite elaborate... But it's a bit strange. Because it isn't obvious why the room was locked at all."

YUKI suddenly giggled. KENZAN glared at him.

"What are you laughing at?"

"If this were an ordinary case, then Kenzan would be absolutely right. But right now, shouldn't we be considering the specific situation we're in?"

"Situation?"

"Within this space, everything is controlled by the rules of the game 'Delicious Death for Detectives' created by Kurata. If you want to carry out good reasoning, you have to abandon your common sense and limit your thoughts to the game."

An attitude was implied in those words – "You should, because I don't plan on reasoning at all"... Yuki continued, "In the game, the Murderer and Executioner's main goal is to 'avoid being caught by the Detectives before the time limit runs out'. Since they only need to survive for a day or so, wouldn't it be better for them to exaggerate the impact of the scene with an impossible crime? As long as we can't solve the trick they used, we can't make a move against either of them."

Hearing YUKI's words, MICHI's face looked doubtful.

"You mean that... the Murderer and the Executioner will both use various tricks to create extraordinary crimes?"

"Yes, so I think it's important to mentally prepare for that."

Kamo looked at YUKI with a complicated feeling.

Yuki had experience solving an incident with its own unique rules. Even Kamo had been stunned when he'd heard the younger man's account of what had happened.

Yuki was the type who could accept the abnormal and incorporate it into his reasoning without any effort. Looking at him, Kamo thought Yuki was someone who could demonstrate more impressive abilities the more unusual the situation he was thrown into.

Kamo thought to himself, Whether he realizes it himself or not... in this game where common sense is of no help, Yuki might be the most comfortable person here.

However, Yuki giving up on trying to solve things was undoubtedly a stroke of luck for Kamo, who had been cast in the role of Murderer... yet at he same time, it was also deeply unfortunate.