When I expressed my dissatisfaction, Mitsumura, surprisingly unresistant, said “Hmm, I suppose you're right.” Then, as if she'd just had an idea, she clapped her hands and said “Alright then.”
“What if I come up with a different solution?”
We all started in surprise. “Can you just do that?” I asked, and she nodded and said she could.
“It's multiple solutions.”
“I will now present a different solution to the Locked Room of the Spiderwebs,” Mitsumura declared, and led us down to the secret passage beneath the room. The passage was made of caramel-colored wood, about a meter high and a meter wide. Spiderwebs covered every surface from one end of the passage to the other, blocking all passage, entrance or exit. In other words...
“So what you're saying, Mitsumura, is that there's a way past these spiderwebs?”
Mitsumura nodded and Teika's question. “And the method is extremely simple,” she said.
“The spiderwebs hadn't been set up when the culprit passed through here. In other words, the passageway was blocked after the culprit brought the body to the room and escaped.”
Mitsumura declared. But we all exchanged looks, and Mei spoke up a bit awkwardly.
“Um... Miss Mitsumura, you do know how long it takes for a spider to spin a web, don't you?”
That was the same argument we'd had with Kyoujirou. It must have taken a long time for that many spiderwebs to have been spun in the passageway. Kyoujirou had solved that problem by releasing a large amount of spiders into the passageway, but even his theory said it would take a month. It wasn't the sort of thing that could be done overnight.
“Yes, that's certainly true,” Mitsumura said with a shrug, as though she already understood all that. “Then how about this? The spiderwebs weren't made in the passage. They were made somewhere else and the culprit brought them here.”
They brought the spiderwebs?
“And,” Mitsumura pointed down at our feet. “This caramel-colored wood... What if it isn't wood, but real caramel?”
We were all completely gobsmacked, and nobody could react. “What do you mean, Miss Mitsumura?” Mei asked, and Mitsumura nodded calmly and said “Exactly what I said.”
“This wooden passage is coated in candy. And that was the culprit's doing. Basically, the culprit prepared a cylinder of the appropriate size to perfectly fit this passageway – a square-sided cylinder, make up of sheets of candy the thickness of writing paper, and kept the cylinder full of spiders which filled it with countless webs. Then, after bringing the body to the room, they inserted the cylinder full of spiderwebs into the passage. I think they prepared several sheets of candy, each about a meter long. Then, after bringing the spiderwebs into the passageway, they used a portable heater to heat the inside of the passage and melted the candy, which perfectly stuck to the passageway. And so, once the candy cooled and hardened, we were left with a passageway coated with candy, completely lined with spiderwebs.”
When I heard Mitsumura's theory, I looked around the caramel-colored passage once again. The surface of the passage looked to be coated with something like varnish, but now that she mentioned it, it did look like candy. Of course, when the police investigated, they would easily be able to tell whether it was candy or varnish, but if they didn't already know Mitsumura's theory, they probably would have never thought to check in the first place. After all, the idea of caramel-colored wood actually being candy – it was so ridiculous, a normal person would have never thought of it.
That aside – If the substance covering the passageway actually was candy, then the trick Mitsumura had just explained was true, and if it was just varnish, the trick with the pin tumbler lock was probably right.
“Yes, that's exactly it,” Mitsumura said, nodding at my explanation. “It will be easy to determine which trick is correct once the police arrive, so for now, just assume whichever trick you like better is true.”
That was how Mitsumura ended. It seemed a bit dismissive, but it also felt a bit like a detective in a mystery novel leaving the truth up to the reader.
At any rate, the mystery of the Locked Room of the Spiderwebs and the Locked Villa, which had been bothering us, were both solved. Just as Mitsumura had declared, both locked rooms could be solved without using the twin switch.
“That settles that, then. Well, I'll be going then!”
As Mitsumura said that and turned to go back to the inn, I quickly grabbed her by the collar of her jacket. Mitsumura let out a strangled groan and glared back at me, asking “What are you doing?”
“Pulling on an innocent maiden's collar, do you have no common sense at all?”
I had no response to that. But I couldn't just let her leave. After all, there was still an unsolved locked room in the mansion.
“I want you to solve the Bloodstained Japanese Locked Room where Dr. Isaburou was killed as well.”
Mitsumura groaned, but she eventually gave in, saying “Oh, alright then. Show me it.” Since she'd promised Ms. Okamibara that she'd solve the locked rooms, she was probably reluctant to go back with a mystery unsolved. So I showed her to the Bloodstained Japanese Locked Room. Incidentally, the rest of our group all said they were tired and went off to rest in their rooms. “I'm tired, too,” complained Mitsumura.
When we arrived at the scene, I explained the circumstances under which the body was discovered. She listened to me with disinterest and looked around the Bloodstained Japanese Locked Room.
“This is quite the unusual locked room.”
I agreed.
First off, the victim was lying on a table, his legs and torso tied down with wire so he couldn't move. But his arms weren't tied down, so he was apparently able to move them. As if to prove that, when we found the victim, he had his arms stretch out above his head in what was either a cheer or an “I am being held at gunpoint by the police” pose.
And then, while tied to the table, his head was cut off. The cut end of his neck was found facing the two sliding doors that served as the only entrance to the room, and the blood spray from his neck had glued the doors shut. Locked by blood – it was a strange phrase, but it was what we were faced with. If the doors had been opened right after the victim was decapitated, the they would have rubbed against each other and smudged the blood. Conversely, if they had been left until the blood dried, it would have hardened like glue, and it would have become impossible to open the doors without breaking the dried blood. In short, regardless of whether it was before or after the blood dried, if the sliding doors had been opened, it would have left some trace. Removing the doors entirely would have left similar traces. And seeing as how those traces didn't exist, the doors hadn't been opened or removed since the murder. The sliding doors may as well have been locked. So even though the doors didn't have a lock, this was still a locked room.
Staring at the two bloodstained doors, I tried to make sense of everything in my head.
The fact that the bloodstain straddled the two doors meant they were both closed at the moment the head was cut off, which, naturally, meant the culprit was inside the room. But the moment the head was severed, the blood would have sprayed onto the doors, instantly sealing the entrance. In other words, the culprit would have been trapped in the room.
If the head had been severed with the sliding doors open, the blood would have shot out to cover the hallway, and if the doors had been closed while the blood was still spraying, it would have left a horizontal line of blood. However, I had secretly checked the hallway earlier, and hadn't been able to find a speck of blood. The floor out in the hallway had an extremely coarse grain, so it would have been impossible to wipe up the blood. And there were no signs that the doors had been closed while the blood was still spraying, or of any blood in a line. Which is to say, the sliding doors were definitely closed at the moment the victim was decapitated. So how had the culprit managed to escape from the Japanese room?
Then, a thought occurred to me.
“What if, after cutting off the head, the culprit ran out into the hallway and closed the doors before the blood reached?”
Mitsumura looked surprised at my theory.
“Kuzushiro, that's obviously impossible. Blood sprays incredibly quickly. It can reach speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour.”
“That's fast.”
If that was the case, it certainly was impossible to leave the room faster than the blood spray.
Having accepted that, I went “Hmm,” then came up with another idea.
“What about this, then? The culprit tied a rope around the neck.”
“A rope?”
“Yes, that would block the arteries and stop the blood flow. So that way, even if they did cut the head off, the blood wouldn't go spraying from the cut. Then they could leave the room.”
Since the blood wouldn't have reached the sliding doors, they could have come and gone as they pleased.
“Then they untied the rope, sending the blood spraying and completing the locked room,” Mitsumura said, putting her hand to her chin. “Unfortunately, that's impossible.”
“Why?”
“First of all, if they had tied the neck tightly enough to stop the bleeding, it would have left a mark. But there is no such mark visible on the body, is there?”
Mitsumura turned her eyes to the dead body still in the room. A bit fearful, I made myself look as well. As she said, there were no traces to be seen.
“More importantly,” Mitsumura continued, “The victim's heart should have stopped as soon as the neck was cut, meaning there would have been no force propelling the blood. Usually, the blood spray is strongest right after the head is severed, then it gradually weakens. In other words, the blood only spurts out with any force for a few seconds after the heart has stopped. In that time, the culprit would have had to get out of the room, close the sliding doors, and then untie the rope around the neck. Accomplishing all of that in a few seconds would have been extremely difficult. And what's more...”
“There's more?”
“There's no way the culprit could have untied the rope around the victim's neck from outside the room. Even if there was, the rope would still be in the room. But it wasn't here when you found the body, was it?”
Indeed, there hadn't been any rope. Flustered, I shouted out the first thing I could think of.
“Maybe they used ice. You know, they pressed ice to the neck to stop the blood flow.”
“Ice doesn't melt that quickly,” Mitsumura flatly denied. “It would have taken tens of minutes for that much ice to melt. By then, the victim's heart would have long since stopped, producing no blood spray from the neck.”
“Y-You're right.”
I finally gave up on my theory. After the head was severed, the force of the blood spray would have only kept going for a few seconds. It was impossible to remove the rope or anything else in that little time without leaving some evidence behind in the room.
“Well then, maybe it was a partition made of ice?”
I thought about placing a partition in front of the body to keep the blood from splattering on the sliding doors, but I quickly realized that didn't make sense. If they'd done that, the blood would have splattered sideways when it hit the partition, getting on the wall in an unnatural pattern. And more importantly, the blood wouldn't have gotten on the sliding doors, and we wouldn't have a locked room on our hands.
“Alright, you clearly have no good ideas,” Mitsumura said with a shrug. “Let's actually examine the evidence left at the scene. To interpret the evidence... We need to talk about the whydunit.”
“The whydunit,” I nodded.
“There are four major whys in this case:
① Why did the culprit tie the victim to the table?
② Why did the culprit put a motorcycle helmet on the victim's head?
③ Why did the culprit paint the helmet's visor black?
④ Why did the culprit glue the visor in place so it couldn't be opened?”
Hearing what Mitsumura said, I looked at the victim's head lying on the tatami mat floor. The head was hidden in a full-face motorcycle helmet. It was a total mystery why the culprit had done that.
Looking at it like that, there certainly were many whys about the crime left unanswered. And it was possible that answering those whys would expose how the crime scene was locked.
“Well, there's one thing we still need to investigate.”
Mitsumura took a pair of rubber gloves from her pocket, put them on, and approached Isaburou's body. The body was tied to a table with wire, and its head was cut off. It was such a gruesome sight that anybody would want to avert their eyes, but Mitsumura approached it like it was another day at the office.
“Hmm,” Mitsumura said, examining the cut surface of the neck. “It doesn't look like it was lopped off with a cleaver or sawed off. More like it was hacked off with a knife of some sort, maybe a kitchen knife.”
“You can tell?”
“Yes, to a certain extent. Looking at the cut, Dr. Isaburou's neck wasn't severed in one clean cut, but chopped off with a knife. Like a thick steak.”
I didn't want to picture that. Mitsumura looked at me frowning and calmly continued.
“So we've discovered another why. ⑤ Why did the culprit use a knife to sever the head? And regarding the head... Hmm? What's this?”
Mitsumura had picked up the victim's head off the floor. She put her hand between the helmet and the head and tried to twist it.
“What's the matter?”
“I'm trying to take the head out of the helmet,” she said, furrowing her brow. “But I can't get it out. Perhaps its been glued inside.”
“The head is glued to the helmet?”
I was confused. I didn't understand what she was saying. How would it benefit the culprit to do something like that? In other words...
“⑥ Why did the culprit glue the head to the helmet?”
Mitsumura declared an additional why. Then she went “Huh?” and looked at the back of the helmet, tilting her head.
“There's glue here, too.”
“Really?”
I cautiously approached the helmet and saw that there was indeed a small amount of glue on the back of the helmet.
“Which means,” Mitsumura placed the helmet back on the floor and approached the table on which the rest of the body lay. Then she looked at the severed neck, at the surface of the table where the head had been, and said:
“There's glue here, too.”
Looking at it, there were traces of glue on the table. Did that mean...
“Was the victim's helmet glued to the table before the head was severed?”
That would explain the presence of glue on both the table and the helmet. And then, for some reason, it was pulled off. Why? That was also part of the whydunit.
“⑦ Why did the culprit glue the helmet to the table?”
I nodded at Mitsumura. We were now up to seven whys. And this was just a guess on my part, but I felt like if we solved all the whys, we would be able to solve the trick of the Bloodstained Japanese Locked Room.
I looked at Mitsumura expectantly. Then she nodded, gave a “Hmm”, and took off her rubber gloves as she turned to me.
“I'm going to put my hair in a ponytail.”
“Why?”
I didn't see where she was going with this. Mitsumura scoffed.
“I think better when my hair's in a ponytail.”
“I've never heard anything like that before!”
Wait, no, come to think of it, I think Yozuki said something like that once. As I stood there confused, Mitsumura took a hair tie from her pocket. She tied her black hair back in a ponytail, gently closed her eyes, then quietly reopened them.
Her eyes, which were always cool, dropped a few degrees. They'd become cold and emotionless. They were the eyes of a murderer.
Well, she might have been a murderer. After all, she may have committed the first locked room murder in Japanese history.
“Give me fifteen seconds,” she said with her cold eyes. “That will be enough time for me to break this locked room.”
I felt overwhelmed. Seeing me nod, Mitsumura turned to the corpse. I counted the seconds in my mind. My heart was pounding. Time seemed to be moving slower than usual.
Then, after exactly fifteen seconds, she let her hair down. Silky, shiny locks of black spilled out.
“I've got it,” Mitsumura said. “I know how the culprit created this locked room.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she nodded, her eyes having regained their life. Then, stroking her black hair, she said “The culprit performed an extremely bold and extremely bizarre locked room trick.”
“I will now explain how the crime scene was locked,” Mitsumura began. “First, the culprit used a strong anesthetic to put the victim to sleep and carried him into this Japanese room. Then, they used a knife to cut the victim's neck. They didn't cut the neck bones, but instead the cartilage connecting them. That was the easiest part to cut. However, if they'd cut any arteries, it would have produced blood spray, so they avoided touching any blood vessels, carefully cutting right up to the limit of what they could do without drawing excessive blood. They also left intact the central nervous system connecting the neck to the torso – that is, the spinal cord. If they cut that, the heart would have stopped and no longer pumped blood, which would have ruined the trick. The spinal cord is located behind the cervical vertebrae, so it could be left alone. Furthermore, to prevent the head from moving, they used the knife to cut the muscles supporting the neck so that they would be easier to tear, but still left them somewhat intact.”
She'd suddenly started saying some insane things.
“Wait a second, is all that even possible?”
When I blurted that out, Mitsumura answered with a calm nod.
“It is. As long as the arteries, veins, and central nervous system are all left intact, humans can live through quite a bit. The heart and lungs will still function as long as they're connected. The culprit only cut the neck muscles, capillaries, and peripheral nerves, things that aren't necessary to maintain organ function. They don't contribute much to keeping the body alive, so they could be safely removed. Of course, it's hard to actually cut a human neck without hitting the arteries and central nervous system, but it would be possible for someone with the skills and knowledge of a first-class surgeon. And the culprit must have experimented.”
“Experimented?”
“Experimented on humans. I wonder if they killed a few people as rehearsal for the trick.”
Seriously?
“Probably. They kidnapped random people not from the village. Then they demonstrated the results of their practice on the victim, Dr. Isaburou. After completing these steps, the culprit left the room and closed the sliding doors behind them.”
“Hmm?” She hadn't addressed the whole point. “The victim's head is still attached,” I said.
The neck was cut up a bit, but it was still connecting the head and body.
“Yes, at this point, the head is still attached,” Mitsumura said. “At this stage, the victim's neck is only partially cut. Which is to say, it was in a state where it was much easier to tear off than normal. If someone had given it a good pull, it would have been possible to rip the head off with your bare hands. But it was still connected. It would have been an exaggeration to say that it was only held on by a few strips of skin, but it was barely attached by a few muscle fibers and blood vessels. In short, the head was connected, but it could have been completely severed by a bit of physical force – a direct pulling on the neck. And the only way to apply physical force to the victim's neck would be for the culprit to reopen the sliding doors, enter the room, and pull it themself.”
But if they did that, then the moment the head was removed, the blood would spray out and cover the sliding door. In other words, the sliding doors would be locked by blood. That would leave the culprit inside the room. So this trick didn't actually solve the locked room, did it?
“Yes, that's right,” Mitsumura nodded. “So the culprit couldn't have reentered the room and torn off the victim's head.”
“But then, how?”
“It's obvious, the culprit tore off the victim's head without entering the room.”
I was still confused. Tore off the head without entering the room? Did she really believe that was possible?
I gave it some thought, but finally gave up and shook my head. I admonished her.
“That's impossible. It can't be done. Unless there are any wizards around you plan on accusing.”
“Actually, as it happens, I found some spellbooks in the mansion library...” she said with a laugh. “I'm kidding. This is where the real action begins. Everything up until now is just preparation. The core of the trick is the finishing blow. How did the culprit apply force to the victim's neck from outside the room?”
After saying that, Mitsumura pointed to Isaburou's head lying on the tatami mat.
“And the evidence of the trick is still right here at the scene. It's the helmet the victim was wearing.”
“The helmet?”
“Yes, specifically, the way the visor was completely blacked out and fixed in place with glue. Now, Dr. Isaburou, the victim, was put to sleep with a strong anesthetic, but he did eventually wake up. What do you think went through his head when he awoke in that state?”
“What went through his head?”
The first thing I thought of was “pain”. I mean, his neck was sliced practically to ribbons. But I quickly realized my mistake. According to what Yozuki had said earlier, Isaburou had a medical condition that rendered him incapable of experiencing any amount of pain. That's what he'd told Yozuki after he fell off his bike. Maybe shortness of breath? His neck was cut, so his trachea must have been severed. But Mitsumura had specified that his lungs were still moving, so he should have still been able to breathe with a cut trachea, like a tracheotomy patient. I doubted that was what Mitsumura was talking about. I thought about it a little more, and eventually, I arrived at my answer...
“It was pitch black...?”
Mitsumura nodded.
“Yes, that's right. The visor was painted over, so his vision was completely blocked. He must have been extremely confused. Furthermore, the muscles of his neck were cut, so he obviously couldn't move them, and his legs and torso were tied to the table, so the only part of his body he could move was his arms, the only parts that weren't tied down.”
“Could he move his arms?”
“His central nervous system wasn't damaged,” said Mitsumura. “The central nervous system is like a cable that transmits signals from the brain to the limbs. As long as that cable wasn't severed, he could have still moved his arms.”
I see, I think. So even if the muscles of the neck were severed, as long as the nerves were intact, he could have still moved his arms as normal.
“Returning to the point,” Mitsumura said once she saw I'd been convinced. “The victim had no idea what was happening. His throat had been cut, so he couldn't speak properly. When he touched his head, he realized he was wearing a helmet over his face. That was when he realized. Could the helmet have been what was blocking his vision? When he realized that, what would the victim have done? Obviously, he would have tried to remove the helmet. And there is the trap.”
“Trap?”
“The helmet was full of glue and completely attached to the victim's head. What would happen if he tried to remove the helmet like that? Naturally, if the helmet moved, the head, being attached to it, would also move. The important thing to keep in mind here is the small amount of glue applied to the back of the helmet, affixing it to the table. So even if he tried to remove the helmet, it wouldn't budge. Confused and frustrated, the victim pulled harder, gradually building up more and more strength. Finally, he was able to overpower the adhesive force of the glue and peeled it off. What would have happened then? Naturally, with the amount of power the victim was putting into his arms, they would have rapidly reached over his head. Which is to say, he gave his own head a solid pull. The victim's neck would have been subjected to a force of at least a few tens of kilograms.”
“No...”
That was... absurd. I asked, unable to believe what I'd imagined.
“The victim tried to take off the helmet, and in doing so, he accidentally pulled his own head?”
And as a result...
“Yes, that's exactly it,” she nodded. “The victim ripped his own head off.”
At first glance, it sounded like an unusual form of suicide. After all, the victim had ripped off his own head. But of course, it wasn't suicide. It was murder. Because the murderer had arranged to trick the victim into ripping off his head.
And... I looked at the body again. The victim, strapped to the table, had died with his arms raised above his head. Looking at it, it was pretty strange, but now I understood why he'd died in that position. Because he'd ripped off his own head.
“But is this trick really doable?”
I couldn't help but wonder. Mitsumura stroked her black hair and replied “Of course, there was a chance it could have failed.”
“The culprit couldn't have perfectly predicted how the victim would behave, and it was possible some unforeseen even would have caused his spinal cord to be damaged before he could rip his own head off. Of course, if that happened, the crime scene would no longer be a locked room, but I think the culprit would have accepted that. If the trick failed, there would have been nothing stopping them from returning to the scene and performing a different locked room trick. And it's specifically because it's such an uncertain trick that the benefits of success are so great.”
I nodded at Mitsumura. It was true that the more unusual the trick, the less likely it was to be solved. So I understood the benefits of performing an unusual trick.
But this...
“Isn't this a bit too far-fetched?”
Mitsumura shrugged.
“Is that so bad? There have already been four locked rooms in this village. Isn't it okay to have one of them be like this?”
And so, thanks to Mitsumura's deductions, the Bloodstained Japanese Locked Room was solved. The next problem was that mysterious phenomenon: the spontaneous human combustion of the young man named Murawaka who had tried to leave the village.
After moving Isaburou's body to the mansion's wine cellar, Mitsumura and I returned to the tunnel at the entrance to the village to investigate the spontaneous human combustion. Halfway through the tunnel, a wire mesh had been lowered to block the tunnel, and next to it lay a burnt corpse. It was Murawaka, who had died right in front of me and the other villagers. It was sad, but nobody dared to approach him due to the corpse, so he had been left there.
After he died, I heard from Camembert that Murawaka was actually a recently debuted locked room mystery novelist who had moved to this village because he admired the Monokaki Family. Thinking back, he hadn't believed in the curse and had seemed more rational than the other villagers. But that rationality had been burned away by sheer irrationality.
Mitsumura walked up to his body, looked down at it, and said
“Did he really just start burning out of nowhere?”
I nodded. She remained suspicious.
“Really? Nobody approached him?”
“Nobody.”
I had seen the whole thing from beginning to end. Murawaka was a bit away from the crowd, and nobody had approached him. And yet, he had caught fire.
“I see.” Mitsumura put her hand on her chin, apparently having accepted my claim. “So then this is a locked room murder.”
“Huh?” I went at her sudden declaration. What on Earth was this woman talking about? This was a locked room murder? How could it be?
“No, this isn't a locked room at all.”
When I reflexively let that slip, Mitsumura shrugged.
“No, it is a locked room. If you say it isn't, than all that means is that you don't have a good enough understanding of what a locked room is.”
That felt extremely insulting coming from her.
“Because Mr. Murawaka suddenly began burning in full view of everyone, right?” Mitsumura said. “In other words, it was impossible for anyone to get close to him, and yet, he was killed. It's no different than a crime where the victim is killed in a room with the entrance under constant surveillance. There are various schools of thought when it comes to defining locked rooms, but I interpret it as meaning either 'nobody could approach the scene', or 'nobody could leave the scene'. Under that definition, this is a case where 'nobody could approach the scene', ergo, a locked room.”
When she said that, it did seem like a locked room. But it also seemed like she was just fast talking about minor quibbles of definition.
And when I heard her say that, I realized something else.
“You mean you think there's a rational explanation to this case of spontaneous human combustion?”
Mitsumura had called it a “locked room” and even a “murder”. In other words, she interpreted the phenomenon as a case with a human culprit.
She gave a nasty smile and said “Of course.”
“Don't tell me you thought it was the curse?”
I couldn't say anything to that. Finally, I spoke up as though making an excuse.
“I didn't think it was the curse, just, you know, some sort of paranormal phenomenon.”
“Well, I'm sure the culprit was very pleased with that.”
I figured she was right. If there was a human culprit, they'd succeeded in killing someone in a way that could only be explained by supernatural powers. I didn't know what sort of trick they'd used, but I was sure it was the culprit's proudest moment.
But according to Mitsumura, this case was definitely not the result of a curse. It was a locked room murder committed by a human. So I decided to dub this incident the fifth locked room – the Locked Room of Human Combustion. In actuality, it was the first locked room murder to occur in the village – maybe even the zeroth – but changing the numbering at this point would be a pain, so please let me call it the fifth.
So we decided to investigate the fifth locked room – the Locked Room of Human Combustion.
“For instance,” Mitsumura said, “What if Mr. Murawaka's clothes were soaked in gasoline and then ignited with a spark? That would make it possible to burn him without approaching, right?”
In theory that was true.
“But that's not how he burned,” I said.
It was hard to explain to someone who hadn't seen it for themselves. But it definitely wasn't what would have happened if his clothes had been soaked in gas and ignited. First, Murawaka had started suffering, then a pillar of flames had begun spewing from his mouth. I didn't know what sort of trick could make something so incomprehensible happen.
Mitsumura nodded at my explanation, said “I see,” and then crouched down next to the burned corpse and began to examine it. She immediately noticed something.
“Oh? There's a hole in the bottom of Mr. Murawaka's foot.”
I tilted my head and looked at the spot Mitsumura had indicated. Sure enough, there was a hole in the middle of the heel of Murawaka's right foot, about the size of a U.S. dollar coin. Murawaka was wearing sneakers, which had naturally been charred, but the hole went all the way through the sole of his shoe and appeared to penetrate deep into his foot.
“Hmm.” Mitsumura looked up in thought. Then she started.
“There's a surveillance camera on the ceiling.”
“Wait, really?”
I looked up as well. I couldn't see any camera there. As my face fell, Mitsumura pointed at the ceiling.
“Look, over there. It's a pinhole camera, so the lens is small.”
“Huh.”
As she'd said, there did appear to be a camera there. This girl had sharp eyes. As expected of the prime suspect of the case that had shaken the foundations of Japan. Well, not that finding security cameras was the sort of skill you could brag about.
Ignoring me, Mitsumura looked down. She picked up some sand from the ground.
“The ground is sandy...”
The ground of the tunnel was covered in sand, like a sandbox in a playground. But so what? As I thought that, Mitsumura started digging in the ground with her bare hands like a child. After digging about 50 cm deep, she softly said “I see.” I saw a wooden board in the hole she'd dug up.
Mitsumura looked up and told me “I understand.”
“I know how they burned the victim's body.”
She knew how they'd burned the victim's body? As in, she'd figured out the trick behind the Locked Room of Human Combustion?
Mitsumura nodded at me. Then she pointed to the hole she'd dug in the ground and said “The trick itself is simple.”
“There's probably some sort of underground passage beneath this sandy ground. A narrow passage with a wooden ceiling. The culprit passed through it and stood directly underneath the victim.”
When I imagined the scene, a simple question came to mind.
“How did they know where the victim was?”
“With the surveillance camera, of course.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, looking up at the ceiling. A pinhole camera was installed in the ceiling. If there was a way set up to wirelessly transfer the footage, they could determine the victim's location from within the underground passage.
So, the culprit had moved underground and stood directly beneath the victim – at his feet. The next question was how they burned the victim alive. Or rather, that was the entire mystery of the case.
As if answering my unspoken question, Mitsumura said “The clue is the hole in the victim's foot.”
“That is, the one in the center of his heel. If that hole was made by the culprit from beneath the victim, the rest of the trick is obvious.”
I frowned. It sure didn't seem obvious to me. Mitsumura said “Let's go over it in order,” in the tone of a student council president delivering a report.
“By approaching the victim via the underground passage, the culprit made themself invisible to Kuzushiro and the villagers. The culprit was able to attack the victim from directly below. That is, they pierced through the wooden ceiling of the underground passage and struck the sole of the victim's foot. And because the victim's heel was flat on the ground, the attack couldn't be seen by those above ground.”
“So that attack was what made the hole in the victim's heel.”
I could accept that, but my head tilted once again. How did we get from there to the man burning alive?
“Yes, that requires a leap of imagination,” Mitsumura said, a bit arrogantly. “There was a hole in the victim's heel – that doesn't seem like much, but it could be enough. So what if that hole... was much deeper than you assumed?”
The hole in the heel was deep? That made me think. There was a deep hole in the heel. You'd never suspect it watching from the outside, but what if that hole stretched out like a tunnel and reached all the way to the victim's knee?
“No, that isn't it,” Mitsumura said, shaking her head. “Deeper.”
“Deeper?”
So the tunnel reached passed the knee and reached the thigh-
“Deeper,” Mitsumura said again. “The tunnel penetrated all the way through the thigh and continued deeper. All the way to the victim's abdomen – around the intestines. In short, the culprit hiding in the underground passage thrust a long metal stake into the sole of the victim's foot, and that stake went all the way through the victim's leg and into his abdomen.”
Imagining the scene, I let out a gasp. It was true that a human leg standing upright was straight, unless the person stood with extreme bow legs. Of course, there would have been some curvature, but not so much that it would be impossible to dig a straight tunnel only the width of a coin. So if they thrust the stake straight into the sole of the heel, it should have passed right through the leg to reach the abdomen. That scene had gone completely unnoticed by me and the others there on the ground above. It was in a total blind spot. If that was the case, it would also explain why Murawaka had looked like he was suffering before the fire began. He'd been impaled from the sole of his foot all the way to his stomach. Maybe even deeper, up to the chest. If that was the case, it wasn't surprising he'd been in so much pain he couldn't speak.
The question was...
“Is that even possible?”
The stake had gone all the way from the bottom of the foot to, at minimum, the abdomen. Since it had gone through the leg, it must have hit bone along the way. I thought it must have stopped halfway, but...
“It's simply a matter of power,” said Mitsumura. “For example, if you shot a small caliber bullet into the sole of the foot, it wouldn't stop halfway up the leg. But if you used a larger bullet with more power behind it, it could penetrate the leg completely. The human leg is just flesh and bone. That's why the culprit used a powerful pile driver to drive the stake into the sole of the foot. And Kuzushiro, you and I should be extremely familiar with the existence of a machine like that.”
I tilted my head to the side. “I should?” I asked, and she sighed and said “Of course you should.”
“You have heard of it, haven't you? Gungnir.”
I gasped aloud. Of course I knew about Gungnir. It was a machine that appeared in the works of Fuichirou Monokaki's father, Zerohiko Monokaki. It used gas pressure and electricity to fire a spear faster than a bullet. Not only that, Zerohiko had designed the machine in real life and had it patented in the U.S., so the fictional machine also existed in reality. Of course, actually manufacturing one was expensive. But if it was a machine that could shoot a spear, which is much larger than a bullet, at a speed faster than any bullet, it might be possible to shoot a stake all the way through a person's leg into their abdomen. I imagined a spear flying faster than the speed of sound piercing through leg bone and tunneling through flesh. It never would have been possible with a mere human's power.
But the real problem began here. Even if I accepted that a long stake had been thrust into the sole of his foot, I didn't know what came next. How had the victim's body been burned?
“I think at this point, the answer is self-evident,” said Mitsumura as she stroked her black hair. “Think about it. What if the stake that had pierced the victim's leg was hollow? That is, like a hypodermic needle? Of course, the hole at the tip of the needle was sealed with a cap, but what if that cap popped open when the needle reached the abdomen?”
I imagined the scene. The stake penetrated through the heel, ran up the leg, and reached the abdomen. The stake had a hollow center like a hypodermic needle, or a metal pipe. It was like they'd run a pipe from the victim's sole to his abdomen...
“And since that pipe was thrust up through the ceiling of the underground passage, the base of the pipe was still inside the passage,” Mitsumura said. “So, through the pipe, the victim's abdomen was connected to the underground passage where the culprit lay in wait. The criminal then shoved a flamethrower into the pipe. When they fired the flamethrower, the flames went up the pipe to the victim's abdomen. They quickly burned through the victim's lungs and other internal organs, and with nowhere else to go, they eventually passed through his esophagus and overflowed from his mouth.”
I felt my eyes go wide. So that was why fire had come spewing from his mouth.
“Yes, that's exactly it,” Mitsumura nodded. “The flames that you saw were coming from a flamethrower. The flames being spread by the culprit hiding underground were coming from a pipe drilled through the victim's leg and up out of his mouth.”
I was stunned silent by the trick Mitsumura had explained. It was completely insane. But it was, at least in theory, possible.
I turned my attention to the sand at our feet. The stake had been driven up from the underground passage would have made a hole not only in the ceiling of the underground passage, but also in the sandy ground. But since it was just sand, the hole would have been resealed easily. The impact of the victim's fall would have been enough to cover it up.
And that left the culprit with plenty of time to escape. We'd all stood there in shock for several minutes after seeing a man suddenly burst into flames. The culprit could have easily escaped the underground passage and returned to the village as though nothing had happened.
So the only question left was... I put a hand on my jaw.
“Was the culprit targeting Murawaka from the beginning?”
The main goal of this locked room murder was undoubtedly to impress the existence of the curse on the villagers. That would make them too afraid to leave the village, turning it into a closed circle. If that was their only goal, than the victim could have been anyone. There was no need to specifically target Murawaka.
Mitsumura shook her head and said “I don't know.”
“Mr. Murawaka didn't believe in superstitions and seemed to have had a strong sense of responsibility, so they should have been able to predict that he would be the first one to approach the wire mesh. But that doesn't prove they were targeting him. In the end, we have no way of knowing but to ask the culprit. Besides, there are a few other things I'd like to ask them.”
“There are?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “By breaking the Locked Room of Human Combustion, the curse of Yatsuwako Myojin has also been lifted. However, it's still dangerous to leave the village through this tunnel. There is a high probability that the culprit has set some form of trap beyond the wire mesh to prevent us from leaving. I think it would be better for us to remain in the village for at least the eight days of the festival – that is, six more days including today.”
If the trap was on a timer and set to automatically deactivate when time was up, it might have been better to just wait it out. And if we wanted to leave before that, we had no choice but to identify the culprit and ask them about the trap's location.
“Do you think you can identify the culprit?”
So I asked Mitsumura. She nodded at me.
“I already have some idea. So, let's investigate the culprit's identity.”
“I have an idea how we can find out who the culprit is,” Mitsumura said after gently clearing her throat. “If we ask a certain person, we might be able to find out.”
My head leaned to one side. “And who is this certain person?”
“The village gatekeeper.”
I traced back my memory. Come to think of it, when I first arrived in the village, there was a gatekeeper halfway through the tunnel. So Mitsumura wanted to question him and pump him for information.
We decided to visit the gatekeeper right away. First, we went to Mei's room and asked her to draw us a map to the gatekeeper's house. From what I'd heard from Camembert, there were two gatekeepers who worked in shifts, but Mei told us that the two gatekeepers were brothers who lived in the same home.
So we followed the map and arrived at the gatekeepers' house in the Western Village, where the two gatekeepers, having nothing better to do, kindly welcomed us in. They told us that they had been working as gatekeepers for many years, but now that the village was sealed off by the curse, there was no need for them to keep the gate, so they'd been relieved of duty. Mitsumura asked the gatekeepers these questions:
“In the past six days, have you seen Tabishirou Monokaki pass through the gate?”
The two gatekeepers shook their heads at her. Mitsumura gave a slight nod.
“In the past six days, have you seen anyone from the village carrying a large package?”
The gatekeepers once again shook their heads. Mitsumura thanked them and immediately left their house. The gatekeepers and I were both stunned.
“Hey, Mitsumura,” I asked her after leaving the gatekeepers' house. “Um, what was that all about?”
Tabishirou Monokaki – the fourth son of the Monokaki family who'd been hanged to death in the storehouse. What was the point of asking about him? And also whether or not any of the villagers had been seen carrying a large package. What could we possibly learn by asking about that?
Mitsumura shrugged and, as always, looked down on me with a frustrating expression.
“You don't know?”
“I don't know.”
“I see, so you don't know,” she said. “The culprit behind all the strange things that have gone on in this village is Saboten Iyokawa, the locked room mystery author.”
Saboten Iyokawa, a locked room mystery author – I remembered that I'd met a woman in her mid-twenties at the entrance to the inn some time ago. And I was very confused. She was the culprit? How could Mitsumura have come to that conclusion?
“It's simple. Let's begin by going over all the points one by one,” Mitsumura said in her best teacher voice. “First, Tabishirou, the victim in the Locked Storehouse. He appeared on live television five days ago, correct?”
I knew, I had seen that program myself. He had been interviewed at the TV station. Mitsumura must have seen it, too. The village did get cable TV, after all.
“In other words, it's confirmed that Tabishirou was outside of the village five days ago. However, since his body was found here in the village yesterday, that means he must have come to the village at some point before then... Kuzushiro, give me something to write with.”
I handed her the pen and notepad I always carried with me. She wrote a simple timetable on the pad.
Timeline of Tabishirou Monokaki
Six days ago: Food and other items are delivered to village via truck.
Five days ago: Tabishirou appears on live TV.
Four days ago: Culprit amputates Tabishirou's legs*.
Three days ago: Nothing of note.
Two days ago: Start of storehouse security camera footage (8:00 A.M.); Kuzushiro and Yozuki arrive to village.
One day ago: Tabishirou's estimated time of death (1:00 A.M. – 2:00 A.M.); Tabishirou's body found in storehouse.
* Date on which leg was amputated can be determined from victim's time of death. Rigor mortis of legs began between two and a half and three days before estimated time of death, ergo, legs were amputated between two and a half and three days before time of death.
“Something like this. To make the storehouse into a locked room, the culprit needed to get Tabishirou inside the storehouse and finish setting up the trick by 8:00 A.M. two days ago. Otherwise, they couldn't have created the locked room using the security camera. So, Tabishirou must have arrived in the village by then, but the gatekeepers said they hadn't seen him in the past six days. So, how did Tabishirou get to the village?”
“Well...” When I thought about it, I instantly realized what Mitsumura was saying. Of course, the culprit had knocked Tabishirou unconscious and brought him to the village.
“But bringing in an entire human being would be rather conspicuous, wouldn't it?” Mitsumura stroked her hair. “Trucks loaded with food and other daily necessities come to the village every fifteen days, so the best option would be to sneak the body on one of them, but unfortunately for the culprit, the last resupply came six days ago. At that time, Tabishirou was confirmed to still be outside the village, so that wasn't an option. So the only other option would have been to put him in a suitcase or something and smuggle him in...”
That would have been pretty conspicuous.
“Yes, which is why I asked the gatekeepers if they'd seen anyone from the village carrying a large package. The village gate is unlocked between 3:00 A.M. and 7:00 P.M. each day, and during those hours, the tunnel is constantly being watched by the gatekeepers. If someone from the village had done something so conspicuous, they would definitely have been remembered. But the gatekeepers had said they hadn't seen anyone with anything like that. That means the culprit isn't someone from the village, someone who wouldn't look unusual carrying a large container into the village – in other words, a traveler with a suitcase.”
There was only one inn in the village, and there was only one other tourist staying there besides Yozuki and myself.
Her name was Saboten Iyokawa. She must have been the culprit.
Immediately afterwards, we returned to the inn, explained the situation to Okamibara, and went together to the room where Saboten Iyokawa was staying. The room was locked, so I asked Okamibara to open it with her spare key.
When we opened the door, we saw there was no one inside. There was luggage, but its owner was nowhere to be found. “Oh my, she isn't here,” said Okamibara, tilting her head, though her voice was as carefree as ever.
What caught our eyes was a statuette, about 30 cm tall, placed on the tatami mat. At a glance, it looked like a statue of the Buddha, but it had the face of a weasel. Could it be...?
“A kazeitachi?”
“Yes, it's from the Itachi Shrine,” said Okamibara.
So there was a shrine dedicated to the kazeitachi.
Mitsumura and I exchanged a nod and made for the shrine.
The shrine was in the Western Village, same as the inn, and it was too large to really be called a shrine. It was about the size of an eight tatami mat prefabricated hut. It might have been more of a temple than a shrine.
The temple-which-was-officially-called-a-shrine was made of wood and had a sliding door on the front. But when I put my hand on it and pulled to the side, it didn't budge.
“That's strange,” said Okamibara. “This sliding door shouldn't have a lock.”
That set my head a-tilting. I tried to open the door again, but it didn't move at all. What...? It didn't feel like it was locked. It felt more like something was holding the door in place.
“Let's look for another way in.”
Mitsumura suggested that, and we walked around the shrine. We found a window in the back. There was no glass in the window, just a fine wooden lattice. We peered into the temple.
My breathing stopped.
The sliding door at the front of the temple had been boarded shut, with the boards carefully nailed into place. No wonder I hadn't been able to open it. But something even more attention-grabbing was in the room, so I didn't notice that for some time.
A pool of blood was on the floor, and in the middle of it, there lay collapsed a woman.
It was the body of Saboten Iyokawa, the suspect of the murders.
We broke the wooden lattice and entered the room. Saboten Iyokawa was lying face down on the temple floor, her throat slit by a sharp blade. The blood flow from the wound had created a pool of blood about 70 cm in diameter, which had already solidified to the consistency of a thick coating of dark red paint. The pool of blood was centered about 50 cm away from the corpse's head – which was the exact center of the temple. The fact that the pool was pooled there meant that the floor of the temple probably sloped a bit towards its center.
There was one other thing worth noting about the crime scene. Saboten's corpse was holding a bloody knife.
“Suicide?”
Mitsumura sounded suspicious. I took a look around the temple's inside.
The only way in or out of the room was the sliding door in the front, which was completely fixed in place by boards nailed on from the inside. That made this temple a locked room. A Locked Temple, if you will. It would have been impossible to board up the door like that from the outside. The window we'd used to enter had a solid lattice with an extremely fine mesh. The nails used to fasten the boards in place were too thick to have been inserted through the lattice. So there was no way to nail the boards in place through the gaps.
In short, the scene was a perfect locked room, and inside was a corpse with a knife in its hand, looking for all the world like she's slit her own throat.
The only conclusion we could draw was that this wasn't a murder, but a suicide.
Afterwards, we returned to the inn and decided to further investigate Saboten Iyokawa's room. When I rummaged through her belongings, I immediately found two pitch black glass cubes the size of a pair of dice and a handwritten suicide note in an envelope. The suicide note said that she was an illegitimate child of Fuichirou Monokaki, that she had killed her half-siblings to get the inheritance, but that she couldn't live with the guilt so she'd decided to commit suicide.
We read it over and over again, giving the occasional “Hmm” and “Huh”, but eventually, we decided to return to the Monokaki mansion and tell everyone that the culprit behind the series of locked room murders had committed suicide.
“I see, so the culprit committed suicide. It's awful to say, but that's a relief,” Mei said after hearing our story.
“Yes.” Ryouichirou also looked relieved. “The case is solved.”
“It's a bit anticlimactic, far as endings go,” Teika said, stretching as though she'd finally been allowed to put down a heavy weight. “It's strange to hear that the culprit was someone none of us had ever heard of a-fore, but I guess this is more realistic. Reality isn't a mystery novel, after all.”
Everyone said things like that, then they all went back to their rooms. Mitsumura and I were left alone.
Mitsumura looked dissatisfied. But not only had we found the suicide note, but the Locked Temple where her body was found was the most perfect locked room any of us had ever seen. No matter how unsatisfying it was, there was no conclusion other than that it was a suicide.
Plus, in all of the other locked rooms murders committed in the village – except for the Locked Room of Human Combustion where Murawaka had burned to death – a black glass die had been left at or near the scene. Since they were almost certainly all left by the same person, the inevitable conclusion was that all of the murders that had taken place in the village were the work of the same culprit. The reason why no cube had been left at the scene of the Locked Room of Human Combustion was probably because the culprit didn't want that crime to look like a murder, but the result of the curse. But since the Locked Room of Human Combustion was committed with the purpose of turning the village into a closed circle, it was clearly the work of the same culprit as the murders.
So now that it had been determined that Saboten Iyokawa was the culprit of the Locked Storehouse, it followed that she was also the culprit of all the other locked room murders committed in the village. In other words, Saboten's suicide had drawn the curtain on this series of locked room murders.
When I explained that to her,
“Well, that's all fine. I'm still not satisfied,” Mitsumura said dismissively, stroking her black hair. Then she took a look at her watch and said “I'm headed back to the inn.”
“I am still a part-time worker. I can't cause Ms. Okamibara any more trouble. If you need anything else, let me know.”
With that, she went to leave for the inn in the Western Village. Watching her go, I suddenly remembered something and ran to stop her.
“There's still an unsolved case left.”
“An unsolved case?”
“The case of the death of Fuichirou Monokaki.”
Officially, Fuichirou Monokaki had died of natural causes, but when I'd asked Okamibara about it at the inn before, she'd said there was a possibility that he was murdered. The reasoning behind that was the rather dubious “because all of the suspects had perfect alibis”, but now that a series of locked room murders had occurred around his family, it was only natural to suspect that it was murder after all.
That was why yesterday I'd asked Camembert to show me to the place where he'd died. At the time, I hadn't been able to find any evidence of murder, but now that I had Mitsumura with me, I wanted to have her help me reinvestigate the scene.
When I told her that, Mitsumura frowned.
“Is there any point to solving that case now?”
It was true, though I didn't like hearing it. But even though the culprit had committed suicide, I still didn't like leaving any part of the case unsolved.
When I told her that, Mitsumura frowned for a moment, then gave a deep, exasperated sigh.
“Fine, but can this wait until after lunch?”
Her asking made me realize that it was already lunchtime. So I decided to accompany Mitsumura back to the inn.
After finishing our meal, Mitsumura and I returned to the mansion and decided to go to the place where Fuichirou's body was found. Along the way, we bumped into Yozuki. Yozuki was with Mei, who was holding a shogi board.
“Oh, Kasumi,” Yozuki said with a grin. Looking at her with naked suspicion, I asked “What are you doing?” Yozuki looked proud and said “It's exactly what it looks like.”
“I'm going to play shogi with Mei.”
I frowned in suspicion and said “Why shogi?”
Yozuki straightened her back and announced:
“You didn't know, Kasumi? I'm really good at shogi. I'm a 3rd dan in the amateur league.”
As it happened, I didn't know that.
“You see, shogi is a game where natural intellect is everything,” Yozuki, ever the chatterbox, said. “So it's a perfect game for me.”
“A game where natural intelligence matters, eh?”
I'd always thought of Yozuki as an overwhelming dunderhead, so this was a surprise to me. But I thought it was evidence against the claim that shogi was a game where natural intelligence mattered. Because Yozuki had no form of intelligence at all.
“Well, whatever. Do your best.”
And with that, I bid Yozuki goodbye. Yozuki waved at us and went into a nearby room with Mei. Soon, I heard the clack-clack-clack of shogi tiles being laid out.
Maybe it was because the case had been resolved, but those girls sure did seem relaxed. Well, actually, I couldn't recall having ever seen a time when Yozuki was on edge.
After parting ways with Yozuki, I guided Mitsumura to the mansion's archive. The door to the archive was unlocked, and the door was kept open by the stopper. It had been like this ever since I'd entered with Camembert yesterday. Camembert had told me that there were four keys to the archive, one held by Mei, one by Teika, one by Camembert himself, and one by Fuichirou. After Fuichirou's death, Camembert had taken his key, but now it was in my pocket. Last night, I'd told Camembert I might have wanted to investigate the archive again, and he'd been kind enough to lend it to me. Of course, if the door was always left open like this, there wasn't really any need for me to borrow it.
When I told all that to Mitsumura, she coolly asked “May I see the key?” So I took it out of my pocket and handed it to Mitsumura, who took one look at it before putting it right in her own pocket. “I'll hold onto this for you,” she said like a mother taking a New Year's gift. I groaned, but it wasn't worth fighting over, so I let it go.
Incidentally, I'd been told that when Fuichirou's body was found, the door to the archive was also held open by the door stopper. So even back then, anyone could have entered or left the archive.
As I thought about that, I looked around the archive once again. Although it was called an archive, it was quite a large room with many bookshelves lined up, so it looked a bit more like a library. The ceiling was a bit under two meters high. And the bookshelves were far from the most interesting things in the room.
There was a suit of Western armor of the sort worn by medieval knights, standing like a silent watchman. Next to it was the skeleton of a chimpanzee in a space suit that looked like it might have once belonged to NASA. Both were standing upright. Next to them were a wooden shield from some African tribe. There was also a jeweled tiara and a fossilized Archaeopteryx, posed for display. All of these items were on display on a small stage raised about 30 cm.
Mitsumura looked at the Archaeopteryx with interest.
“Is this real?”
“According to Camembert, everything in this room is real. Although it seems they were collected by Zerohiko Monokaki, not Fuichirou.”
“Hmm, Zerohiko Monokaki, is it?” Mitsumura said, sounding slightly in awe. “I don't understand the mind of a millionaire. He must have paid a fortune for this.”
Even as she said that, her eyes were glued to the Archaeopteryx fossil. Maybe she was a dinosaur fan.
“So,” Mitsumura said when she finally managed to peel her eyes away from the fossil. “Where in this room did Fuichirou Monokaki die?”
“No, he didn't die in here,” I said, looking to the corner of the room. “It was in there.”
I pointed to a square door set in the floor. Looking at it, Mitsumura asked me
“The basement?”
“Exactly.”
I grabbed the handle of the door and opened it, revealing the basement. A metal ladder had been set up.
“The room where Fuichirou died is right through here.”
I told Mitsumura and descended the metal ladder. Mitsumura frowned, then reluctantly followed me.
And so, we arrived in the basement basement. Camembert had told me yesterday that the basement of the mansion was an enormous concrete space divided by metal walls into a maze, but we were able to reach the room we were looking for without getting lost. It was 2:10 P.M.
“Hmm, so this is where the body was found.”
Mitsumura took a look around the room. The room had a high ceiling, but it was completely empty. LED lights embedded in the walls made the white floor tiles sparkle.
“From what I was told, Fuichirou collapsed there.”
I pointed to a spot on the floor. Mitsumura stared at it for a while, then turned back to me.
“What was the cause of death? You said earlier that he'd died of natural causes.”
“Well, apparently he suffocated.”
“Suffocated?”
“That's what the medical examiner from the Metropolitan Police Department said,” I told her, relaying the information I'd gotten from Camembert. “But apparently the medical examiner couldn't figure out why he'd suffocated. This basement is supposed to get good air circulation, so suffocation isn't a normal way to die.”
“So it's possible they sprayed carbon dioxide or something else?”
“Yeah, that's what I believe.”
The quickest way to suffocate a person is with gas. In other words, it was pretty likely that the culprit called Fuichirou to this room on some pretext, where he died of gas inhalation.
“But we need some evidence if we want to conclude that. If things remain as they are, the police will stick to their conclusion that it was a natural death. So it looks like we'll need to investigate this room a bit more thoroughly.”
I nodded at Mitsumura's words. Afterwards, Mitsumura and I spent the next thirty minutes wandering around the room, searching for evidence, until finally, Mitsumura frowned.
“We haven't found a single clue.”
“No, we haven't.”
There may not have been any evidence left in the room.
“Besides, we still barely know anything about what actually happened back then. Let's go talk to the people involved.”
Mitsumura said that and went to open the door. “Huh?” she asked, tilting her head in confusion.
“The door is locked.”
“What? Seriously?”
I tried to open the door, but it was indeed locked.
“Does this mean someone locked us in?”
I was extremely confused. What was going on? The serial murder case in the village was supposed to have been ended by the suicide of Saboten Iyokawa.
“How troublesome,” said Mitsumura, pursing her lips. “So Ms. Iyokawa actually didn't commit suicide. Which means the Locked Temple was undoubtedly a locked room murder.”
That was sure what it looked like. Because if it was a suicide, the case would have already been resolved, and there would be no explanation for why we'd been locked in here.
But...
“Does that mean Ms. Iyokawa wasn't the culprit behind the murders?”
“That is what it means,” Mitsumura answered. “The basis for my conclusion that Ms. Iyokawa was the culprit is that no one else could have committed the Locked Storehouse's murder. Because she was the only one who could have brought the victim, Tabishirou, to the village in a suitcase. But there was another way, though I don't know what it is. In short, it must be possible that someone other than Ms. Iyokawa returned Tabishirou to the village.”
Certainly, if there was such a way, the case against Saboten Iyokawa would collapse.
“And the real culprit knew that Ms. Iyokawa was coming to the village,” said Mitsumura. “Perhaps they stole a peek at Ms. Okamibara's list of reservations. And then, taking advantage of the appearance that it was impossible for anyone other than Ms. Iyokawa to bring Tabishirou back to the village, they came up with a plan to frame her for the Locked Storehouse's murder – and by extent, the serial locked room murder case in the village. And as the final step of their plan, they killed Ms. Iyokawa and made it look like a suicide. Ms. Iyokawa was killed just to make it easier to frame her for the crimes.”
And now the real culprit had locked us in the mansion's basement? That made sense. Saboten Iyokawa had apparently left a handwritten suicide note in her room at the inn, but that wouldn't have been difficult to fake. Because, thinking about it, nobody knew what her real handwriting looked like. Every word of that suicide note could have been a lie, including the claim that she was Fuichirou's illegitimate daughter.
But if we assumed she was murdered, that raised a question.
“How did the culprit make the scene of Ms. Iyokawa's murder into a locked room?”
The Locked Temple where Saboten's body was found was a completely perfect locked room. That was the whole reason we'd initially concluded that the case was a suicide.
“No, that locked room wasn't perfect,” Mitsumura said, shaking her head at me. “I've already solved it.”
“...Seriously?”
I had to ask. Mitsumura stroked her black hair and said
“Of course. Who do you think I am?”
She acted so dignified. But of course, I gave her a sour look. Because when she'd first witnessed the Locked Temple, she'd given a look of her own, clearly having been completely defeated by the mystery-
“I didn't look like that,” Mitsumura immediately denied. “It's just that it was such a simple trick that a genius like me didn't think of it right away. But once I gave it some thought, I found the answer in two seconds. No, maybe it was closer to half a second?”
I knew she was extremely competitive, but that was a bit too much. But trying to argue with her would have been pointless, so I swallowed my objections and decided to return to the topic at hand.
“So, what trick did the culprit use?”
“That's a secret,” Mitsumura said, putting her index finger to her lips and reciting the great detective's favorite phrase. “I want to take another look at the scene, just to be sure.”
Her attitude left me speechless. I didn't understand how her brain worked. But Mitsumura didn't show any interest in speaking any further on the subject, so I had no choice but to accept it. There was something much more important going on now.
“Why did the culprit lock us in the basement?”
I looked up at the closed door to the room. After all, once they'd manged to pin the crime on Saboten Iyokawa, the culprit had gotten off scot free. Locking us in here hadn't accomplished anything other than announcing that there was still a real culprit somewhere out there.
“That's true, but...” Mitsumura nodded at me, then looked at the closed door alongside me. Then she squatted down to the floor and said “Well, that isn't anything we need to worry about now. Let's just wait for help to arrive.”
I looked at my watch and saw it was 2:40 P.M. Mitsumura was right, if they noticed we hadn't returned yet, someone would come and save us. Maybe Yozuki... Oh God, could we rely on Yozuki?
Yozuki gazed at the board with a downcast expression. The game wasn't going well. “The game”, of course, being shogi.
“Hrrrngh...”
She was in a tricky spot. She's started playing in high spirits, but it turned out Mei was a powerful opponent. The match had started at two in the afternoon, and for the past hour, the two of them had been playing without leaving their seats a single time, the gap between them slowly widening all the while. If Yozuki were being honest, she didn't see a way out of this one.
But she couldn't lose after showing off to Kuzushiro so boldly. She was sure if she lost, he'd say something annoying. Kuzushiro was always like that, always looking down on her.
“Excuse me.”
Yozuki took a sip of tea from her plastic bottle, releasing an “Ahh” at the end.
For now, she'd keep hanging in there. And after this game, she'd take revenge on Kuzushiro by beating him black and blue. In shogi! She'd beat him in a game of shogi. Yeah, that would be good. She could keep on living knowing that lay in her future.
Come to think of it... Yozuki suddenly realized something.
Where were Kuzushiro and Mitsumura going earlier? Was there something about the incident they still needed to investigate? Something was bothering her. Yozuki had a bad feeling about this.
“...”
Oh well. Yozuki decided not to worry about it. She didn't have time to worry about little things like that while there was shogi to play.
“No one's coming to help us.”
Mitsumura was irritated as she looked at her watch. It was 3:30. Nearly an hour had passed since we'd been locked in this room.
“I wonder what Yozuki is doing right now?”
Mitsumura answered with a groan. To be honest, we were probably better off not expecting anything from Yozuki.
“Well, I'm sure she'll notice by the time night comes,” I said.
Or rather, if no help came by nightfall, I'd join her in sulking. By then, things would have escalated to a life-threatening crisis. I was glad I'd gotten lunch earlier.
Mitsumura also looked depressed as she gave a deep sigh. Then she looked up and suddenly went “Huh?” She was staring intensely at the ceiling.
“What's wrong?” I asked when I saw the puzzled look on her face.
“Is it just me,” Mitsumura said with furrowed brows, “or has the ceiling gotten lower?”
“The ceiling got lower?”
I looked up at the ceiling just like Mitsumura. Had the ceiling gotten lower... When she said so, I felt like it might have.
“It's probably just your imagination,” I declared.
“Really?” Mitsumura asked, looking at it again, then touching her chest as she let out a sigh of relief. “You're right, it is just my imagination. Is this Gestaltzerfall?”
But after 30 more minutes, the change had become much more obvious. Mitsumura was starting to panic.
“No, that ceiling is definitely lower than it was earlier.”
“Y-You're right.” The ceiling had definitely lowered. So, was this...? “A descending ceiling?”
“So, we've discovered the trick used to kill Fuichirou,” Mitsumura said with a nod. “That explains why everyone had an alibi.”
So, Fuichirou was crushed to death by a descending ceiling. And because the ceiling descended so slowly, the culprit had time to make an alibi.
“But Fuichirou's cause of death was suffocation.”
That's what Camembert told me. Mitsumura already had a response prepared.
“Yes, it was. Trapped in this room, Fuichirou eventually noticed that the ceiling was descending, just like it is now. He would have been crushed to death if he did nothing, so he looked for a way to save himself. He got down as low as possible, until he was lying face down on the floor. There was no way of telling how low the ceiling would go, so there was a chance that might have saved him. But the ceiling went on without mercy, until it was pressed against Fuichirou's back, compressing it. With his rib cage compressed, his lungs couldn't expand, and it was impossible for him to breathe. And so, he suffocated to death.”
I shuddered to imagine it. It would be more like being slowly crushed to death than suffocation. A slow crushing that left no visible injuries.
“Which means if we stay here like this, then...”
“Yes,” Mitsumura said, clearly troubled. “We'll also suffocate to death while having an entire ceiling pressed to our backs.”
I didn't want to die like that. So I desperately tried to force open the door to the entrance and escape. But it was still locked and wouldn't open.
“Perhaps the mechanism automatically locks the door when the ceiling is activated,” she speculated. “Well, obviously. If the door could be opened or closed, it would be easy to escape. From a design standpoint, it would be natural for the door to be automatically locked while the ceiling is descending.”
Mitsumura explained it all very logically. Though I'd rather not have heard her theory.
An hour passed, and the ceiling fell even lower.
“This is really bad.”
I wasn't used to seeing Mitsumura this afraid. The ceiling was already at our head heights, forcing us to crouch down. That only made the feeling of being trapped even worse. I tried to kick the door open, but it was made of steel and didn't move.
“Ah, that's it!”
Mitsumura spoke up as though she'd suddenly had a realization. Then she lay down on the floor. I observed her strange behavior and asked “What are you doing?”
“I'm getting as low as possible,” she said, still lying face down. “Fuichirou died of suffocation, which means his body wasn't crushed. So even when the descending ceiling gets as low as possible, there's still a gap between the floor and the ceiling. And Fuichirou was a bit overweight, so we're definitely thinner than him.”
“Oh, I see!”
In other words, Fuichirou was held between the floor and ceiling and suffocated, but there was a chance that the daintier Mitsumura wouldn't make contact even if the ceiling went all the way down. Of course, there was a chance we would still get suffocated, but for now all we could do was take that gamble.
So I tried following Mitsumura's example and lying down on the floor. Mitsumura reproachfully asked me “What are you doing, Kuzushiro?”
“I want you to remain standing.”
“Why?”
“If you do, there's a chance that your crushed remains will support the ceiling and keep it from falling any further.”
That was a terrible thing to say.
“So you want me to sacrifice myself?”
“It's better than us both dying, isn't it? It's called the plank of Carneades.”
What an absurd argument. I ignored Mitsumura's “suggestion” and lay down on the floor.
“No, you idiot!” she cried in a panic. “If you do that we'll both be crushed!”
“That can't be helped. Guess this is destiny.”
“Can you not say that so calmly? Ah... this is bad.”
“What's wrong?”
“I'm suddenly very afraid to die.”
Mitsumura said that and tried to stand up. The ceiling was extremely low, barely a meter off the ground. Mitsumura crawled around the room on all fours. Eventually, she let out a cry.
“What is it?”
“I think there's a gap in the floor.”
Mitsumura got down even lower and pressed her face to the floor. Then she took out a Swiss Army knife from her pocket and pulled out the blade. Mitsumura was a dangerous modern high school girl who was always armed.
Holding the knife in a reverse grip, she thrust the blade into the gap between the tiles on the floor. The tile peeled back like a lid. There was a hole underneath. A hidden space.
“Oh, thank God.”
Mitsumura touched her chest before jumping down the hole. I hurried after her.
The ceiling was already under 80 cm high. After about 20 more minutes, it descended to its lowest point, blocking the entrance of the hidden space we'd found, shrouding the area in darkness.
Mitsumura and I took out our phones and used their lights to search the room, but the space we were in was completely empty. It was about six tatami in size and about 150 cm tall. The small room felt very claustrophobic. The secret entrance was cleverly hidden, so Fuichirou probably hadn't been able to find it.
Mitsumura sighed and placed her smartphone on the floor with the light still on. She licked the tip of her index finger and held it up to check the air flow. Eventually, she sighed in relief.
“It feels like we're connected to the outside world.”
At least we didn't need to worry about using up all the oxygen. But there didn't seem to be any paths leading to the outside, so as far as we could see, there was no escape.
“Ahh,” Mitsumura sighed. “How did things end up like this?”
I wanted to know that myself. I carelessly tossed out some platitude.
“We'll just have to wait for help to arrive.”
“I suppose you're right,” Mitsumura said, looking back up. “But there is also the possibility that the culprit will raise the ceiling on their own.”
I frowned in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“Basically,” Mitsumura said, “we were only saved because we just so happened to find this hidden space. Ordinarily, we'd probably have died by now, right? That being the case, the culprit will assume they've killed us, and there's a high probability that they'll raise the descending ceiling at some point. Because if our bodies were discovered with the descending ceiling lowered, it would be immediately obvious how we died. And that would reveal not only how they killed us, but how they killed Fuichirou. That would be inconvenient for the culprit, because when they killed Fuichirou, everyone related to the Monokaki Family had an alibi.”
“Oh, I see.”
In other words, if the descending ceiling was left lowered, the culprit would lose their alibi for killing Fuichirou. In that case, it did sound likely that the culprit would raise the ceiling at some point.
“The descending ceiling will rise again before too long. Let's just wait until then.”
Mitsumura rolled over on the floor and let out a yawn. That was pretty bold of her. Of course, there was every possibility that she was just putting on a brave face.
But it was true that hearing Mitsumura's reasoning had calmed me down. I had a feeling everything would work out.
“But...”
Mitsumura's current theory was based on the premise that the culprit would act rationally. It went without saying that there were plenty of cases committed by culprits who acted irrationally, and there was also the possibility that something could go wrong – some mechanical trouble with the descending ceiling, or the culprit become indisposed – and the ceiling wouldn't be able to be raised.
When I said that,
“Kuzushiro, you only ever act smart when it isn't necessary,” Mitsumura said, looking disgusted with me. “You're the type of person to be trapped in a death game and only make comments that make the others nervous.”
“Y-Yeah. Guess so.”
“Just sit down and wait,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I can't die in a place like this.”
I was of the same opinion. I can't die yet, either. Because I had a promise I had to fulfill.
A promise I'd made to Mitsumura in the literature club room six months ago.
There's a girl I admire. She's beautiful, intelligent, and even though she has a bad personality, she isn't a bad person. She once let me borrow her umbrella on a rainy day, even though she made a big show of not wanting to, and on my birthday she gave me a stuffed dog she won from the crane game. That stuffed dog was wrapped in a ribbon she'd bought at a 100 yen store, and for some reason, as she handed it to me, she pursed her lips and said “Here. I'll give you this, Kuzushiro.” So she isn't a bad person. Even though she has a bad personality, she's by no means a bad person.
Since she's so beautiful, intelligent, and not a bad person, she can do most things better than the average person, but the one thing she loves more than anything is locked rooms. If there was a God of Locked Rooms in this world, and that God had to pick one person from Earth to be his messenger, she would definitely be the one he'd choose. It wouldn't even be a question. That's why, sometimes, I wonder. Maybe she was sent to this world as an apostle of the locked room. Maybe she's the angel of the locked room, with pure white wings sprouting from her back.
In the winter of three years ago, as if following the will of her God, she committed the first locked room murder in Japanese history, transforming the country into a locked room heaven and a locked room hell. And so, before I'd even realized it, I'd come to yearn. I yearned to destroy her heaven. To bring an end to her hell. And the way to do it was simple. All I had to do was to destroy the First Locked Room she'd created, the root of the locked room madness gripping the world today.
And so, I made a promise. On that day six months ago, in the literature club room. Before the locked room apostle, or perhaps the angel: Shitsuri Mitsumura.
“I will definitely solve your locked room.”
I didn't once think to free her from heaven. It was a purely selfish, personal impulse, so selfish it was embarrassing. I just wanted to win against her. I didn't want to save her, I just wanted to make her submit. All I wanted was to completely ruin her life, and see how she would smile afterwards.
That's why I can't die yet.
Not until I've fulfilled my promise to her, and discovered the locked room trick that controls the beginning and end of this heaven.
“Hrrrrmm...”
Yozuki had been groaning like that for the past few minutes, but eventually, she told Mei, sitting across the board from her, “I lose.” This marked the end of her third game with Mei, but all of them had been painful defeats. Yozuki's confidence as a strong shogi player had been completely shattered.
“Alright then, Miss Yozuki,” said Mei, who was a strong shogi player. “Would you like to stay for dinner tonight?”
“Eh, is that okay?”
“Of course, we're having sukiyaki with high-quality meat.”
“High-quality sukiyaki.”
That did sound good. Yozuki hurriedly wiped the drool from her mouth.
Mei must have found her attitude amusing, as she chuckled as she said
“Do you like sukiyaki, Miss Yozuki?”
“More than eating three times a day!”
That was a strange way to put it, but she just liked it that much.
“That's good,” said Mei as she put away the shogi pieces. “But in exchange, I want you to help me with something.”
Yozuki's head tilted.
“Help? With what?”
“The Summer Hina dolls.”
In Yatsuwako Village, it was customary to display Hina dolls at that time of year. The Monokaki Family was no exception, and apparently they displayed them in the living room every year.
Come to think of it, Yozuki remembered that there were also Hina dolls on display at the entrance of the inn run by Okamibara. She was pretty sure Okamibara was the one who told her about Summer Hina dolls.
“Strictly speaking, the correct custom is to display the Summer Hina dolls on the night of the first day of Obon,” Mei said with a laugh. “But Ms. Okamibara always sets them out early. Since today is the first day of Obon, I thought I'd ask you to help with the decorating, Miss Yozuki.”
That was Mei's condition for letting her eat sukiyaki.
“I'll do it.”
Yozuki's answer was immediate. There wasn't much Yozuki wouldn't do for some sukiyaki.
“But I'll need at least one more person to help,” Mei said as she made her way to the storeroom where the Summer Hina dolls were kept. The mansion was divided into two sections, one to the north and one to the south, with the living room in between them. However, the only things actually in the northern section were the storeroom, Camembert's bedroom, and a full bath; every other room in the mansion was in the southern section. That included all of the rooms where incidents had occurred so far; they were all in the southern section. And since the northern section had no entrances or exists, and all of the windows were barred, the structure appeared to have been designed such that it was impossible to get into the northern section without passing through the living room.
When Yozuki and Mei arrived in the living room, they could see Ryouichirou in the kitchen preparing dinner. “I usually do the cooking,” Mei explained, “but when it comes to sukiyaki, Ryouichirou is the one in charge. He's the sukiyaki master of the household.”
“The Sukiyaki Master.”
That was something to look forward to. But if that was the case, then he probably wouldn't have time to help set out the Summer Hina dolls. So they looked around the living room and saw Teika reading a paperback on the sofa. Mei approached her and asked
“Can you help us with something?”
“What is it?” Teika looked annoyed. “As you can see, I'm a bit busy.”
Mei looked skeptical. “It looks to me like you're just reading.”
“Yeah, that's an important job for me,” Teika said arrogantly. “I'm a writer, so by immersin' myself in words every day, I'm increasin' my affinity with language itself.”
Yozuki didn't understand what she was talking about, and it looked like Mei didn't either. “As expected, you're just sitting around,” she said with a pout. Then she addressed Teika again.
“So please, help me assemble the Summer Hina dolls.”
“No, I'm reading.”
“That's fine, but you won't get any meat.”
“What do ya mean?”
“We're having sukiyaki tonight, so I have the authority to decide who gets to eat the meat. Because if Ryouichirou is the household's sukiyaki master, than I, Mei Monokaki, am the master magistrate of meat management.”
“S-She's too powerful!” Teika said, visibly panicking. “P-Please forgive my insolence. Sukiyaki without meat is like a florist's without flowers.”
Yozuki wondered what that would even look like.
“Please, mercy, I beg of you,” Teika pleaded, shaking all over. “Miss Mei, this is just too cruel.”
Mei, master magistrate of meat management, crossed her arms.
“You will help us assemble the Summer Hina dolls, won't you?”
Teika nodded helplessly. And so, Teika joined their group, and the three of them made their way to the storeroom.
Following Mei's lead, they went through the north entrance of the living room into the northern section, where they eventually came to a door. It was a thick, metal door that opened automatically when Mei pressed a button to the side.
Beyond the door was a long room, about 10 meters wide, 40 meters deep, and 20 meters high, with concrete walls and floor. And for some reason, in the center of the room was a mysterious depression, two meters in diameter and 50 cm deep. It was an odd design like a shallow pit. It looked a bit dangerous. In contrast to the concrete walls and floor, the ceiling was a fine wire mesh, through which they could see up out of the mansion – all the way to the ceiling of the limestone cave. The Monokaki Mansion was contained within the shell of the box around the mansion, but the fact that we could see the cave ceiling from here suggested that the room was outside the shell. In other words, that room was a sort of detached building that could only be accessed through the hallway they'd just gone through.
Inside the huge rectangular room were two more metal doors besides the entrance. One was on the wall directly across from the entrance, that is, the northern wall; a sliding electronic door two meters high and one meter wide. The other was on the wall to the right of the entrance, the east wall. But this door was enormous in size, with two door panels each 15 meters tall and 7.5 meters wide for a total width of about 15 meters, and when it opened, it looked like it would reveal a gigantic square passageway with 15 meter sides. What were they keeping in there, a mobile suit? Yozuki wondered, but it seemed that door wasn't where they were going.
“This is the storeroom.”
Mei approached the smaller of the automatic doors, the one on the north side of the room. So that was the storeroom they were looking for. Mei pressed the circular button next to the storeroom door. The thick metal door slid off to one side, revealing the contents of the storeroom. Inside were several boxes of cardboard and wood. Mei went inside, followed by Yozuki and Teika.
“Oh, where are those Summer Hina dolls?”
Mei searched the cardboard boxes for the dolls. Yozuki casually looked around the storeroom, but started when something caught her eye.
“Th-That's...!”
It was a gun. A long gun, like a hunting rifle. It was almost a meter long, including the barrel. Yozuki stared a hole through the gun leaning against the wall of the storeroom.
“Why is there a gun here?”
“Oh, that's from my grandfather, Zerohiko Monokaki's collection,” Mei said casually. “Did I tell you he was the one to build this house? That gun has been there since we first moved in. It's part of Grandfather's legacy, so to speak. It will probably always remain a mystery what he was thinking when he left that gun behind.”
“I see.”
Yozuki picked up the gun. She heard the rattle of a chain. Looking closely, there was a chain running from the gun's stock to a metal fitting attached to the storeroom wall. The chain was extremely old, with a rough, thoroughly rusted surface.
Looking back to the gun in her hands, Yozuki saw that the muzzle was covered with multiple layers of paper. Therefore, it would be impossible to use the gun without peeling that paper off. However, the paper was quite yellowed, so it appeared that nobody had used that gun recently.
“I've been interested in that gun for a while,” Teika said, eyeing the gun in Yozuki's hands. “I've been in this storeroom a few times now, and it catches my eye every time. I've thought about takin' it out for a spin, but as ya can see, it's chained to the wall an' the muzzle's sealed, so I gave up.”
After expressing her disappointment, Teika said “By the way, the bullets are over here,” and opened one of the wooden boxes as casually as if she'd memorized it. There were several huge bullets that looked more like stakes inside. They were a uniform size of roughly 5 cm in diameter each.
But the bullets didn't have cartridges. Yozuki didn't know much about guns, but surely they couldn't be fired like that?
“Oh, that's an air rifle.” Teika said.
“An air rifle?”
“See that stopper there? When you pull it back, the gun gradually fills with air.”
Just as Teika had said, there was indeed a stopper on the back of the gun, right where the hammer would normally be. With a normal gunpowder gun, the bullet was fired when the hammer struck the cartridge, but an air rifle had no need for a hammer. So there was a stopper instead.
But this was Yozuki's first time ever seeing such a bulky air gun. It was probably custom made. Well, Zerohiko Monokaki was insanely rich, so it was probably no big deal for him to have a gun like that made.
“Ah, here they are.”
Mei announced her findings. Looking over her shoulder, they could both see the dolls peeking out of the open cardboard box.
There were three boxes of Summer Hina dolls in total. So the members of the group carried one each to the living room. They all left the storeroom with a box in their hands, and as they were about to step into the room past the storeroom – the backroom – Yozuki was sudden overcome by curiosity about the huge door to the east. It was a massive door that opened left and right like an elevator, 15 meters tall, and now that she looked at it, it was also covered in a tight seal made of Shinto talismans. There were about ten of them, reaching in a line from about foot level to about eye level.
What was that door? It was clearly suspicious.
“Um, I've been wondering this for a while now, what is that door?” Yozuki asked.
“Ah, that,” Mei replied seriously, “is a mysterious door.”
Well, Yozuki thought, that doesn't explain anything.
“The truth is, I don't really know,” Mei said apologetically. “One theory is that there's a demon sealed inside.”
“A sealed demon.”
Yozuki didn't appreciate having demons sprung on her out of nowhere. Besides, that was a pretty lame story. She would have preferred a more unique monster of folklore, like a kazeitachi.
Yozuki voiced her objections, and Mei replied “I suppose you're right.”
“To be honest, I don't believe in the demon either. But what Grandfather Zerohiko told us about that door is...”
Mei pointed one finger to the ceiling and spoke in a somewhat theatrical tone.
“That door must never be opened. Not ever. Anyone who opens it will be met with death, without exception.”
“Death without exception...”
“It's like somethin' out of a bad horror movie,” said Teika.
It certainly was a ridiculous story. A room that killed anyone who opened it? It wasn't like they lived in a mystery novel.
Yozuki approached the door and tried to open it. But there was a glass case over the button, and it looked like there was no way to push the button without breaking the glass. It was the sort of case you sometimes saw over the buttons of emergency shutters. So the door couldn't be opened for mere curiosity.
Yozuki groaned in disbelief, but there was nothing more she could do. They all picked up their cardboard boxes and left through the southern door.
When they left the storeroom, on their way back to the living room, they saw Camembert strumming on an acoustic guitar.
“Hey, Camembert,” Mei called out. “It's almost time for dinner.”
“Okay, give me a minute. I'll be right over.”
Camembert put the guitar back in its case. The guitar case was made out of resin and was slightly over a meter long and about 15 cm deep. The case was size-matched to the guitar, and it looked like, with the guitar inside, there wouldn't be any room for anything else.
“But why do you have a guitar?” Yozuki asked.
“Well, I like playing the guitar,” came Camembert's unexpected answer. “So every night, after dinner, I take my guitar outside the mansion to practice. Although, maybe it's more appropriate to say I'm out there playing with the muses.”
The cheesy line hit Yozuki like a slap. Who gave this guy the muses' numbers? At any rate, it was an unexpected hobby. Was he playing guitar in the hallway as a warm up for practicing after dinner? Or was he just showing off?
“That's a pretty stylish guitar,” Yozuki observed as she eyed the instrument in its housing. “It's got some sort of cat design.”
It actually didn't, but the knots in the wood grain on the guitar's surface had coincidentally formed a shape like a sitting cat. Though the shape of a cat was complicated enough that all you could really make out was the outline of its ears and tail. Still, the pattern, which was either the product of nature or a prank of the gods, did certainly give the guitar a wholly unique style.
“It's amazing, isn't it?” Camembert asked proudly. “I just so happened to see it in a music store, and it was love at first sight. True love. I mean, this is the only guitar in the world with a cat design like this in the world.”
That was probably true. That the knots had assumed the form of a cat even once was improbably enough. If the wood had been cut a millimeter off, it would have been left with a completely different design, one a hundred out of a hundred – no, a thousand out of a thousand people would have failed to recognize as “a cat”.
Camembert spent some time boasting about his guitar, but eventually, he seemed satisfied that he'd impressed its greatness on them, closed the case, and left it in one corner of the hall. He then joined Yozuki and co. as they made their way to the living room.
The sukiyaki was already set out on the table. It seemed Ryouichirou, the sukiyaki master of the Monokaki Family, had prepared it all. Ryouichirou had taken his seat ahead of the others, and pushed his glasses up as they arrived. His expression was calm, but he gave off an aura of pride.
And for some reason, Chusaita was also sitting there, sipping sake from a glass. Yozuki was perplexed by the sight of him sitting there drinking so casually. Chusaita noticed her and spoke apologetically.
“When I came by to take another look over the scenes for my report, Mr. Ryouichirou invited me in for sukiyaki.”
“That's not how I remember it,” Ryouichirou said sarcastically. “You're the one who said 'By the way, I'm hungry. What are we having for dinner?'”
“Ah, you do have a point.”
That sounded like a bit more than “a point”. Then Camembert, unable to take it any longer, came to the rescue, saying “Come on, Ryouichirou, have a heart.”
“We're grateful for you for always watching over us. So please, come in and let us pay you back.”
Chusaita was deeply moved by his words. Wiping his tears, he said “Well, then... I'll have to take you up on your offer and come relax.”
However, the village policeman was no match for Yozuki when it came to relaxing. Or when it came to eating sukiyaki, either.
On the table, a large amount of quality meat, likely A5, was laid out. Ryouichirou put the meat in the pot and added the sauce. The sauce heated up, and the smell of sukiyaki filled the living room.
Nobody could hold back anymore. Yozuki and her companions sat down and shouted “Thank you for the food!”
Thus began the Great Sukiyaki War of Yatsuwako Village.
Yozuki picked up the marbled meat with her chopsticks, dipped it in egg, and brought it to her mouth. It was delicious. It was superb. Then she shoveled rice into her mouth. It was even more delicious. It was immaculate.
Suddenly, Yozuki had a thought. There was something she'd forgotten.
Kuzushiro and Mitsumura weren't here. But the overwhelming tastiness of the meat made Yozuki forget her concerns for the moment. And so, she was consumed by the deep, deep abyss of sukiyaki.
“Phew...”
Yozuki ate and ate and ate, and an hour later, she was finally full.
The others also looked satisfied. Dinner had started at 7:00 P.M., and not a single person had left their seats since then, for fear of having their share of the succulent meat stolen.
Camembert also let out a “Phew” with a satisfied expression, then wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin.
“That was the good stuff.”
Camembert stood up and left via the north door of the living room, the one that led to the northern section. The living room had two exits, one to the north and one to the south, leading, respectively, to the northern and southern sections of the mansion. There were no other exits, and the window of the living room was fixed and didn't open.
Five minutes after leaving for the northern section, Camembert returned to the living room, carrying his guitar case. “Well, I'm going to go play my guitar,” he said. Then he sighed, and said, in good cheer, “No... I've got a date with the muses.”
“'Kay,” said Yozuki. “Have a nice trip. Have fun.”
Camembert looked sad at Yozuki's indifference. Then he left via the south exit to the southern section. That was the only way to the mansion's exit.
“Well, I have to get back to work,” said Ryouichirou as he stood up. “I have to finish my manuscript.”
Ryouichirou said that and also made his way out to the southern section. Apparently his room was that way.
“Ryouichirou always goes back to his room right after dinner every day,” Teika said as she rubbed her full stomach. “He's a real stoic. Stays in his room writin' an' doesn't leave until two or three in the mornin', every day. I don't get how he can work after dinner.”
Yozuki thought that Teika should work a bit more. As she did, Mei also got out of her seat and quickly cleaned the table like a real maid. She carried all the dishes and the pot to the kitchen sink. Then she wiped down the table with a cloth.
Meanwhile, Chusaita was sitting alone sipping sake. He appeared to have had a lot to drink already, as his face was red and he was starting to doze off. He occasionally muttered things about politicians. It was obvious enough that he was drunk.
Mei washed her hands in the kitchen sink, then, as she wiped them with a towel, declared “Alright, now it's time to assemble the Summer Hina dolls.”
Yozuki was a bit surprised. To be honest, she'd forgotten there was still work to do. And also to be honest, she was full and really didn't want to.
But Mei clearly didn't realize that, as she spoke cheerfully.
“Well, Miss Yozuki, Ms. Teika, let's get started. Please, wash your hands first.”
“Uugh... Okay.”
“I can't move, I'm too full...” Teika whined as she stood up.
Yozuki and Teika washed their hands, then helped set up the Summer Hina dolls. The dolls had lots of parts, and they didn't come with instructions, so it was pretty hard.
A bit less than an hour after they started, the clock struck nine, and Yozuki gave up. “I'm going out for some night air,” she announced before leaving the living room through the south door and sprinting to the mansion's exit before anyone could stop her.
When she stepped outside, she felt a pleasant chill from the night air. Yozuki walked around the garden for a while and enjoyed the night air when suddenly, she heard the sound of a guitar. Following the noise, she walked over and saw Camembert. It was in a remote spot on the edge of the garden, where few people would visit. He was playing the same acoustic guitar he'd shown her before dinner, the one with the cat pattern. He was illuminated by the light from the top of the box over the mansion.
“You look like you're having fun,” Yozuki called out to him. “Even though you can't really play.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Guess I just need more lessons from the muses.”
Yeah, still creepy. But Camembert didn't seem to care what Yozuki thought and kept up his crappy solo with aplomb. Yozuki, completely exhausted from setting up the Summer Hina dolls, listened absently to the sound of the guitar. Camembert played the main theme from Alice Detective Bureau, then the main theme from King's Restaurant, then the main theme from Donkey Kong Country 2. He was a guy who only played main themes. After spending some time just listening, she took a glance at the time and saw that it was already 9:30. If she didn't return soon, Mei would get angry.
Thirty minutes after Yozuki returned to the living room and resumed work on the Hina dolls, Camembert returned. Mei, the chairwoman of the Summer Hina Installation Committee, told Camembert to help out too. Camembert tensed his shoulders like an office worker who'd been caught slacking off.
“Give me a minute to put my things away,” he said, holding up the guitar case.
He then walked through the living room to the northern section, returning empty-handed five minutes later.
From there, Yozuki and the others, now including Camembert, went back to work assembling the Summer Hina dolls. They finished just as the date changed. It was now 12:05. They'd started work at 8:00 P.M., so it had taken them about four hours. Though Yozuki had spent thirty minutes slacking off outside. But Mei and Teika had kept working diligently, not leaving once the entire time. Though Teika had tried to escape many times, only kept in place by Mei's watchful eye.
Incidentally, Chusaita had been sitting at the table drinking the whole time, but at around 10:30, he said “I'm going to the bathroom,” and left to the northern section. He appeared to know where the bathroom was already. Apparently he was a regular visitor. He returned to the living room about ten minutes later, wiping his hands with a handkerchief and saying “Welp, I gotta get back to work,” before saluting and leaving via the south door, towards the exit. His face was fully red and he looked completely drunk, so they wondered if he'd be able to make it back, but about thirty minutes later, he returned. “What's the matter?” Mei asked, and he scratched his head and said “It's a bit embarrassing, but...”
“Can I use your bathroom?”
As they'd thought, he was very drunk. “I'm very ashamed,” Chusaita said, clasping his hands together before he went back to the northern section. He returned to the living room ten minutes later and went back to drinking. It was like he thought he owned the place. When the clock struck twelve, he shamelessly said “Oh, it's already that late?” and once again left via the southern door.
Yozuki recalled Chusaita's actions as she gave a stretch there in the living room. Then, with a quiet yawn, she announced that she was headed back to the inn. Mei made a kind suggestion. “Since you've come all this way, why not stay the night?” To be honest, Yozuki had already been thinking what a hassle it would be going all the way back to the in, so she took up the offer at once.
After taking a bath and climbing into bed, Yozuki got the feeling she'd forgotten something. Then she remembered Kuzushiro and Mitsumura.
It was already past 1:00.
Surely they'd already returned to the inn. Yozuki decided not to worry about it any further.
I had lay down on the floor of the underground space, and before I realized it, I'd fallen asleep. I woke up due to the discomfort of the hard floor, and noticed a light coming through the ceiling. This hidden space shouldn't have had any lights... Eventually, the truth was able to penetrate my sleepy brain. The light from the room above was reaching us.
I bolted upright. The ceiling had been raised. Until yesterday, it had been blocking the entrance to this hidden space, but now it was back to its original height.
“Mitsumura.”
I approached Mitsumura, who was still sleeping a bit away, and gave her a shake. “Oi, Mitsumura,” I called out. With her eyes closed, she mumbled something.
“Hmm, hrmm...”
“Mitsumura?”
“The kitty... so cute...”
It looked like she was dreaming. I shook her again.
“Mitsumura. Wake up, stupid.”
“Don't call me stupid!”
Her eyes instantly snapped open. And she was angry.
“Look, the ceiling's been raised.”
I pointed up to try and dispel her anger. Mitsumura quickly sat up.
“They finally did it. Just as I expected.”
She sounded proud of herself. I remembered that Mitsumura had said yesterday that the culprit would raise the descending ceiling. Perhaps they believed they'd killed us and raised it to hide the use of the ceiling.
“So,” I said. “If we wait here, do you think the culprit will come to us?”
Maybe they'd come by to confirm whether or not we'd really died. Mitsumura frowned.
“That is possible, but if they decide to lower the ceiling again, we'll be done for. Let's get out of here while we can.”
She raised an excellent point. So Mitsumura and I climbed out of the hidden space and returned to the room with the descending ceiling. We put our hands on the door, and it slid right open. It was unlocked. Mitsumura had said yesterday that the door locked automatically while the descending ceiling was lowered. It seemed she'd been right.
“Now we can finally return to the surface,” Mitsumura sighed in relief. “Yesterday was the worst day of my life.”
“It most certainly was.”
If I had to die, I didn't want it to be from suffocation due to having my ribs crushed under a descending ceiling. I wanted to die peacefully, preferably wrapped in a warm futon.
Mitsumura and I exchanged a nod and left the room with the descending ceiling. We made our way through the basement and returned to the surface.
The basement was as complicated as a maze, but fortunately, there was a straight line from that room to the archive, where the entrance was. There was no way we could get lost. So we went straight until Mitsumura suddenly started twitching her nose. She tilted her head to the side.
“Kuzushiro, do you smell something?”
“Smell something?”
I turned my head towards where Mitsumura was facing. Sure enough, there was a smell coming from there. It was the smell of sweet olives. Of course, sweet olives couldn't have been growing underground, so it must have been perfume or something. But why was there the smell of perfume down here?
The maze branched off to the east halfway down, and the scent of sweet olive drifted from further down the passage. Mitsumura started that way as though drawn to the scent, so I followed her.
We made our way through the underground maze with metal walls, and eventually reached a room. Both of us froze.
The corpse of Ryouichirou Monokaki was lying there with a stake piercing his chest.
Locked Room Draft No. 5 (By one of the Eight Locked Room Masters of the Showa Era: Ouki Tatsuda)
The victim's body is discovered in a massive indoor maze. Inside the maze, several guards sitting on metal chairs are posted, but the culprit is able to make their way through the maze without being seen by any of them.