How had things come to this?
Sitting down on the long-piled carpet with his back to the wall of the stairwell, Ichijou Yuma looked up at the sky.
Before he'd realized, the clear sky had been covered by heavy clouds, and a light snow had begun to fall across the transparent glass enclosing the space.
The display room, approximately ten meters in diameter and covered by a glass cone, had become a prison.
He had been stuck in there for hours. The cold of the carpet seeped through his trousers and into his hips, chilling him to the bone. Yuma adjusted the collar of the wrinkled old coat he wore to ward off the cold – apparently the same one Peter Falk had worn while filming Columbo – and shrank inwards.
“Where did it all go wrong...?”
The question spilled unconsciously from between his lips.
Was it when he'd approached Kozushima Tarou with murder in his heart? Or was it when he decided to attend the mysterious banquet held at the Glass Tower, thinking it was the perfect opportunity? Or...
“...Was it when I met that great detective?”
The soft words, exhaled with his white breath, melted away into the cold air.
There was no point thinking about it now. Yuma put his head between his knees. It was all over.
This story, The Glass House Murders, had already come to a close.
The truth had been uncovered by the great detective, and he, the culprit, had been arrested.
The bizarre series of locked room murders that had taken place in that glass spire had been solved. There was nothing left for the culprit to do but quietly leave the stage.
Yuma slowly closed his eyes.
The image of the great detective, a cynical smile on her handsome face, was engraved on the backs of his eyelids.