Born in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1985. Debuted in 2017 with Death Among the Undead, which won the Tetsuya Ayukawa Prize and came in first place in the This Mystery is Amazing! Rankings, the Weekly Bunshun Mystery Best 10, and the Honkaku Mystery Best 10. In 2018, he won the Honkaku Mystery Award (Novel Category) for the same work. His other works include Death Within the Evil Eye, Nemesis I, Death Within the Malefic House, Dispel, and The Endeavors of Kyōsuke Akechi.
April had long ended, and the excitement that comes with the chatter of new students' voices had passed. The May blues that spread during Golden Week had also subsided, and with the arrival of June, the campus had finally returned to normal. The students' attires were incorporating fewer long sleeves and lighter clothes every day in preparation for the coming humidity. Changes like that were just another small part of being a third year student.
Peace was good. I appreciated it all the more after the bizarre events I had experienced in a certain village in the Kiso Mountains last month.
But that peace also exposed some problems.
Unfortunately, the Eito University Mystery Club had failed to secure any new members this year. It was a voluntarily formed group of like-minded individuals, so it wasn't something to be overly concerned about, but it was clear that the club's turnover was stagnating, and now that three of the five members were in their fourth years, it was much harder to find time to all meet up together. As a result, my daily life, while peaceful, had become rather dull.
“I wonder if Mochi and Nobunaga will come today?”
It was lunchtime, and on my way to the student center, I ran into Maria, full name Maria Arima, who casually moved to join me. Her signature semi-long russet hair looked rather dashing when coupled with her cool outfit of a white logo tee and light blue jeans.
The “Mochi” she'd just mentioned was Shūhei Mochizuki, a senior of the Mystery Club and a fourth year economics student, and “Nobunaga” was Kōjirō Oda, also a fourth year economics student. They were a famous dynamic duo of the Mystery Club, but because they were both deep in their job hunting phases, they hadn't been able to meet up lately.
The club also had another member, club president Jirō Egami, who was also a fourth year, but Maria hadn't mentioned him. He'd taken a two year gap period then repeated his final year four times, so he would be expelled from the university in March of next year. Despite that, Egami showed absolutely no signs of concern regarding his future prospects, so we could meet whenever we wanted. Those four people plus yours truly, Alice Arisugawa, made up the entirety of the Mystery Club.
“I don't know about Mochi, but Nobunaga was at a joint company information session until yesterday. I think it was in Nagoya.”
Nobunaga was Oda's nickname within the Mystery Club, derived from the famous warlord. He was looking for a job in Nagoya, where his parents lived, at their request.
Before I knew it, I'd taken my smartphone out of the back pocket of my jeans and was checking the messages I'd exchanged with Oda a few days ago. Smartphones were tricky things; they were convenient, but I always ended up fiddling with them. They often interrupted my thoughts when I was reading or writing, and as an aspiring novelist, I couldn't honestly welcome their spread when I saw the way they caused the decline of paper book sales.
“I hope they both get something soon. …So Alice, have you started a new piece yet?”
Maria may as well have read my mind. I had shown her and my seniors some of the works I'd written in the past, and they'd shared their thoughts and advice. However, I'd been stuck on my current piece for over a month, and was only about halfway finished. Now that I'd gotten some experience, I wanted to do more than create for the sake of it, to make something impressive and original, and I was starting to feel that what I'd already started wasn't worth finishing. I wasn't exactly in a slump, but...
“I put a lot of thought into this story. I don't want to abandon it on impulse. I do want to finish it.”
“If you're feeling stuck, wouldn't it be easier to just make something else and go back later?”
Her casual remark stung my petty pride, and I argued, feeling that she didn't appreciate how hard I'd worked on it.
“If that's what you think, you should say the same thing to Mr. Egami.”
I realized it sounded like I was jealous and immediately felt embarrassed. I added “Even you want to read The Red Death Mansion Murder Case, Maria.”
The Red Death Mansion Murder Case was the title of a mystery novel that rumor held Egami was working on. The man himself had told me it was real, so it probably was true he was writing it, but since there hadn't been any progress since before I joined the club, it had become something of an urban legend.
Luckily for me, Maria took the bait.
“The title combines The Masque of the Red Death and The Black Death Mansion Murder Case. I wonder what sort of story it will be.”
I couldn't even imagine. Egami had encountered and solved many genuine murder cases, so perhaps those experiences had become seeds that were growing into new ideas even as we spoke. Just like the Sagrada Família, which had been under construction for over a hundred years.
We crossed Karasuma-dōri and entered the student center. The Mystery Club's meeting place was in the back corner of the lounge on the second floor.
I went up the stairs and peeked in through the entrance, where I saw a man with long hair falling across his shoulders at his usual table. He was leaning back on a bench, gazing blankly at the seat diagonally opposite him. It was Mr. Egami. Unlike the noisy students at the other tables, he was sitting quietly and showed no interest in his surroundings. He made me think of a lion, lazing about on an artificial rock formation in a zoo.
“Yo.” Egami noticed us and raised a hand.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah. I've been here since noon, but I haven't seen Mochi or Nobunaga.”
“That's too bad. I guess this is what they mean by not appreciating things until they're gone.”
Maria said something that the people in question would have immediately objected to.
In the past, we'd sometimes message each other to ask whether we could meet at the student center the next day and what time we'd all arrive. But whenever we found out someone wouldn't make it, we'd all come to the university feeling a little lonely, as though someone had broken a promise we'd never made. It seemed I wasn't the only one to feel that way, so we all decided it would be more fun to arrive and hope we'd get to see each other, so we stopped using our smartphones for Mystery Club business except for important communications.
However, Egami was the only one of us who, for whatever reason, didn't even own a cell phone, let alone a smartphone.
The three of us spent some time discussing mysteries in translation we'd read recently, when Maria suddenly looked up and let out a happy noise.
We all looked towards the entrance to see the familiar duo of Mochizuki and Oda. It had been a long time since the entire club had gathered together.
“You both look busy,” said the club president, commending them.
“You don't look very busy yourself, Mr. Egami.”
The slender, bespectacled Mochizuki responded with a bite of his lip, while the short haired Oda added “It's not like we're being strangers here. Job hunting's just something you need to plan.” As expected, as soon as those two got together, the atmosphere livened up considerably.
I asked Oda something.
“How was Nagoya?”
“I'd thought eating ogura toast would bring back memories, but it didn't. I spent most of my time just hanging around Nagoya Station, so I didn't feel any nostalgia at all. Speaking of, it can't be helped that all the local specialties like miso katsu pork cutlets and kishimen noodles are all concentrated around Nagoya Station, but can't they do something about all the tourists and locals all being concentrated into one place?”
“...So I'm guessing the job hunt hasn't been going well. I notice you didn't bring us any souvenirs, either.”
I said that sarcastically, but Oda suddenly turned smug.
“Don't worry. My hands might be empty, but I did bring a story that's perfect for the Mystery Club. I also brought some Mochi, so use his wisdom to your heart's content.”
“Don't make people into souvenirs without their consent.”
Mochizuki retorted, but as a serious mystery freak, his eyes were filled with interest.
Maria and I exchanged a look, and I waited to see Egami's reaction.
“You're a valued club member. I'd like to hear your story as soon as possible.”
The joint company information session that Oda had attended was held in an exhibition hall in a complex near Nagoya Station. Over fifty companies with strong ties to the Tōkai region, mostly from the Aichi prefecture, had gathered in a series of booths to explain their company and employment opportunities.
However, June was late in the year for fourth year students to be attending information sessions, and the participants were all anxious to have not received any job offers yet. On top of the tense expressions that everyone wore, the venue itself was full of a suffocating heat, as though they were being crammed into an invisible packed train. Oda worked hard to visit many different company's booths.
Once he had his bag filled with pamphlets, he decided to take a break in the building's cafe. In an area the size of a convenience store, a row of round white tables and chairs had been lined up, and noble warriors on the path of the job hunt, dressed in ill-fitting suits, were sitting inside. Oda bought a can of coffee from the vending machine outside and sat in an empty seat. However, he found it hard to calm down while surrounded by the unique silence born of tense, anxious job hunting students. So he took the paperback he'd brought on the train with him from his bag.
The Wycherly Woman by Ross Macdonald.
He'd read it so many times that he'd completely memorized it. It was the perfect book to calm himself down. He allowed himself to sink into the sea of words and had fallen into a comfortable rest within minutes. He heard someone pull out the chair across from him and looked up in surprise. The person had a long face with olive skin. His hair, parted in the middle, had a shine like the spread wings of a beetle.
Oda recognized him instantly. He had been sitting next to him at one of the company's booths. It was a steak restaurant chain that operated mainly in the Tōkai region that was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Prime Market. During the company presentation, he'd heard a clicking sound next to him and looked over to see that his neighbor's ballpoint pen had run out of ink. “Do you want this?”, Oda asked, handing him a spare from his pen case. He replied “That's a help” while gesturing in a chopping motion. It stood out even more in his memory due to the man's Kansai dialect.
“Thank you for earlier.”
“It was nothing. Job hunting's a good time to do good deeds.”
“Could it be that you're from Kansai?”
“Guess I sound like a farm boy. No, I'm a local. My name is Oda.”
When Oda went on to introduce himself as a student at Eito University, the man introduced himself as Kobayashi.
As he'd expected, Kobayashi was a student at S. University, a private university in the Kansai region, and lived in Osaka. After discussing their job hunts for a while, Kobayashi made note of the paperback in Oda's hand.
“Reading even in a place like this? You must really love books.”
“Yeah, I've been a member of the Mystery Club for four years now.”
He didn't mention that said club wasn't officially recognized by the university.
Kobayashi's eyes widened in surprise.
“What a coincidence. I'm also in my university's Mystery Club. Well, I'm a member in name only, I don't actually do much. I was thinking I could write a novel someday, but I gave it up in the end.”
“I'm pretty much the same.”
Just as he was about to blurt out “Sometimes we encounter real cases,” he shoved his empty coffee can to his mouth and pretended to take a sip to cut himself off. Then Kobayashi looked at him and said “That's right.”
“Mr. Oda, are you interested in solving mysteries? Or, rather than solving mysteries, what about deciphering codes? A friend of mine played some sort of prank on me a while ago, and it bothers me that I still don't know what it means.”
And then he told a story.
It was in November of last year. Kobayashi had applied for an internship at an insurance company. The plan was that he would go to the company's main office in Tokyo and work there for three days.
The work itself went off without a hitch, and Kobayashi, who'd had no prior experience with being a working adult, dragged his exhausted body back from Tokyo to his apartment in Osaka. However, when he entered his home, he was shocked by what he found.
In the center of the floor of the room, a large human figure had been drawn with what looked like white chalk. It looked just like the outline drawn at a murder scene. Nearby was a small shoulder bag, from which wet wipes, a smartphone, and several other objects were spilling out.
The white figure had no face, so it was impossible to tell whether it was lying face up or face down, but its legs appeared to be stretched limply outwards. From Kobayashi's perspective standing in the doorway, the arm on the left was hanging straight down, while the right arm was bent at the elbow and brought up next to the ear.
But what struck Kobayashi most was that there appeared to be something written directly above the right hand.
“It looked like the person lying there had used the last of their strength to write something – in short, it was a dying message.”
It was easy enough to figure out who had left it.
The shoulder bag left in the room looked familiar. It belonged to Bitō, a friend of Kobayashi's two years his senior, who had known that Kobayashi was going to Tokyo for an internship.
Kobayashi drew a recreation of the message on a notepad. Oda looked at it, then asked a question.
“Did you talk to Bitō about this?”
“Of course. They readily admitted to being the prankster, but still won't tell me what the message means.”
“So the figure drawn in chalk is the victim, and you should name the culprit, right?”
“If there's some other interpretation, I wish someone would tell me about it.”
Kobayashi sighed.
“How was the message written? Was it written in magic marker? Or scratched into the floor, maybe?”
“It was a red marking. Not from anything I kept in the apartment; it was brought in the shoulder bag. When I saw it, at first I thought it was real blood, so I was really surprised. I already erased it and the chalk figure.”
“Had anything else about the scene changed?”
Oda was a bit embarrassed to call it “the scene” so casually, but Kobayashi didn't seem to mind and replied with his chin in one hand.
“The apartment's window was closed and locked properly. The smartphone that had fallen from the shoulder bag had a cracked screen and wouldn't turn on.”
“Was it dropped on the floor and broken?”
“No, I think it was just decorative. I sent a text and got a response immediately, so they must have prepared a second phone. Though I don't know what the point of going to all that effort was. And... Oh, right, the date on the calendar had been changed.”
“The calendar?”
“I keep a page-a-day calendar hanging on the wall next to my desk. It's a regular calendar; one of my professors got it from a manufacturer. When I left, it still showed the date I left for Tokyo, but when I returned, it had been changed to two days later – the day I returned from Tokyo.”
Oda thought that might be significant.
“Where were the pages that had been torn off?”
“They were balled up and thrown in the trash can, exactly the same way I always do.”
Kobayashi shrugged.
Those were all the clues he could remember.
“That seems like a lot of effort for a simple prank. I assume this person knows a thing or two about mysteries?”
“Yeah. Bitō was... from the Mystery Club.” Kobayashi stopped and scowled. “The club president. Currently working for a small publishing company. Not in any capacity related to mysteries, though.”
At that point, they realized it was time for the next program, a job counseling session, so they exchanged contact information before standing up.
“I'll ask the other club members about this. The club's been so quiet lately they're probably dying of boredom, so I'm sure they'll jump at the chance.”
“That would be a big help. I can't figure it out no matter how hard I think, so I want to hear someone else's interpretation.”
Wishing him luck on the job front, the two parted ways.
“This is the message.”
We looked at the sheet of memo paper Oda had brought back from Nagoya.
It was too simple to be called a code, and appeared to consist of two characters.
“'Ao' means blue. And K... it could a smudged kanji 卜, an archaic way to write 'fortune telling'.”
Mochizuki followed up on Maria's reading.
“It isn't fortune telling, it looks more like the katakana ヒ – 'hi'. Or maybe an unfinished half of a 'ki' kanji, 木.”
It we did consider it a dying message, it would be a natural assumption to think that the victim ran out of strength partway through writing the name “Aoki”. Then my eyes met those of Oda, who was looking at me.
“Alice, you aren't thinking 'The victim ran out of strength partway through writing the name ‘Aoki’, are you?”
He was free to think whatever he wanted, but I'd have appreciated if he at least waited for me to say something before judging me.
“A dying message is something a victim leaves behind with the last of their strength. It's more natural to read it normally instead of overcomplicating things. Though that doesn't make for a very good puzzle.”
“Go complain to Kobayashi, he's the one who gave me the puzzle.” Oda tapped at his smartphone and turned the screen towards me. He had exchanged messages with Kobayashi after returning from Nagoya and had already asked him about that. Kobayashi's call icon was a mask with black spots that made me think of a mysterious magician.
“He says the only Aoki he ever met was a classmate from middle school, and that he has no idea where that Aoki is now.”
“It could be Aokiji or Aokai.”
“Okay, it's no fun just denying it, but I'll do it: I doubt there are forty people named Aokai in the entire country. Unfortunately, none of them are acquaintances of Kobayashi's.”
Mochizuki interjected, as though to end our pointless exchange.
“Even if he did know someone who fit the bill, if that was the correct answer to the problem, it would be a major problem.”
He could have put it more efficiently, but I understood what he was saying.
Just because that was one possible interpretation of the message didn't mean they were the culprit.
Maria nodded.
“The person who committed this prank, Bitō, was the former president of the Mystery Club, right? He must have prepared a more complicated solution.”
But if we could trust the note Kobayashi had given us, the “AO” was pretty clear, and none of us saw any way it could be interpreted differently. In that case, we just had to find a new interpretation of the K. Just because it was next to the AO didn't automatically make it English. Did it? Egami, who had been sitting silently thus far, suddenly spoke up.
“According to Kobayashi, there were some other strange things about the room. Shouldn't we take them into consideration as well?”
“Mr. Egami, could it be that you've already solved the case?”
Mochizuki didn't look very happy.
For people who enjoy mysteries, their enjoyment is halved if they can't share the process of thinking through it and the emotions they experienced after reading with someone else.
Of course, reading is fundamentally a solitary activity, but with mysteries, there is also the aspect of the back and forth with the author as you uncover the clues they planted in their work and use them to logically reason out the path to the solution. Although it looks like you're thinking alone, you are sharing the joy of deduction with the author, who exists as your mirror image.
The reason authors aren't happy when readers manage to correctly guess culprits using so-called meta reasoning, like recognizing patterns from other works or merely picking the suspect they dislike the most, is probably because that exchange of information doesn't take place.
But isn't that fine?
Egami waved his hand.
“You're overestimating me. Right now, my thoughts are all over the place. I can't think of a single thing. I'd appreciate if you all would feel free to share your own thoughts with me, which would help me organize them.”
Come to think of it, when we went camping on Mt. Yabuki in the summer of my first year, we had gotten caught up in a murder case that also involved dying messages.
In a real murder case, any messages left behind can only be interpreted arbitrarily, so any conclusion drawn solely from them is, in my opinion, useless in identifying the culprit. However, this crime scene was just fabricated by Bitō as a prank, so it was questionable whether there was any useful information to be found.
At that moment, the “strange things” that Egami had mentioned earlier crossed my mind.
“Ah!” I blurted out, and Oda heard me.
“Alice, you just thought of something. Hurry up and tell us.”
“Hold on a second. I'm not sure how much of this crime scene we should be trying to link to reality.”
Judging from the looks on their faces, I hadn't gotten my point across, so I gave them an example.
“Who is the victim drawn in chalk? Since this mystery was made for Kobayashi, the answer to the dying message should be someone he knows. But the chalk figure doesn't have a face, so it isn't necessarily someone he knows. Therefore, logically, the culprit could also be someone he doesn't know.”
“Hold on, that doesn't make sense,” Mochizuki immediately interjected. “Why would a complete stranger be murdered in Kobayashi's apartment? That doesn't make sense.”
“Right, which made me think that it's possible that the crime scene wasn't Kobayashi's apartment, but a room in another apartment building.”
Maria looked confused.
“You mean it was a case where 'a murder happened somewhere'? And we're still supposed to find the culprit?”
Maybe I'd pushed the thought a bit too far. “Sorry, just ignore me.”
“No, it's an interesting point,” came an unexpected claim from Oda. “You're right that we were so distracted by the dying message that we haven't given any thought to the scene or the victim. Whether it's honkaku mystery or hard-boiled, those are necessary steps.”
Oda crossed his arms and tapped his right index finger.
“That said, an unrelated crime would be a boring answer. First off, regarding the victim, Bitō's shoulder bag was found at the crime scene. There's no way that isn't related to the crime. Which should mean that the chalk outline is of Bitō.”
“There is another possibility, Nobunaga,” Maria interjected. “He's the culprit. We don't know the culprit's face any more than the victim's, so it's possible Bitō fought with the victim and dropped his bag at the crime scene.”
I was impressed by what an interesting twist that was.
The person whose name was known from the start wasn't the victim, but the culprit. It was the sort of plot device that only someone with a deep knowledge of the mystery genre would come up with.
But Mochizuki was less enthused.
“If Bitō is the culprit, the victim left a terrible dying message. Even Kobayashi was completely unable to connect that message to Bitō.”
“Hmm, I see.” Maria didn't seem disappointed. Maybe she was just happy to take part in the discussion.
We decided to assume for the moment that Bitō was the victim, and Oda moved the discussion onward.
“Next, the crime scene. Bitō deliberately took advantage of Kobayashi's absence to play this prank. I think we can interpret that as the crime taking place in his room.”
That was another common opinion, but there was something that bothered me.
“First of all, how did Bitō even get into Kobayashi's apartment? When Kobayashi returned from Tokyo, someone had vandalized his room.”
“Maybe he kept a spare key in the mailbox or something.”
It appeared Oda hadn't been told anything.
However, who was able to get into Kobayashi's apartment was extremely important.
“We just agreed to consider Bitō the victim. If Bitō was killed in Kobayashi's room, then Kobayashi would be the first suspect. But if that was the case, then it doesn't make sense for Bitō to have gone out of his way to leave a dying message with the culprit's name.”
There was no need to single out Kobayashi as the culprit if the crime scene was his room.
“But if someone else was the culprit, the question becomes how the culprit and Bitō got into Kobayashi's room.”
Maria tilted her head.
“Kobayashi invited them in, then the murder took place while he was out at the convenience store or something.”
“Then the culprit would still be obvious, and the dying message would become unnecessary again.”
“Oh, I see.”
With her convinced, I continued.
“That brings us back to what I said earlier. Maybe we shouldn't be thinking of the crime scene as Kobayashi's apartment.”
“That makes sense, but perhaps we're focusing on the wrong things.”
Egami brushed back his long hair.
“Bitō, the author of the puzzle, went to the effort of entering Kobayashi's room and creating this evidence. They had to do all this precisely because the dying message was targeted at Kobayashi. If the message wasn't for Kobayashi, and if the puzzle was about something that happened in a place unknown to him, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble.”
Mochizuki chose that moment to raise his hand and interrupt.
“Do you think it's a recreation?”
“A recreation?”
“Bitō and Kobayashi were involved in some sort of incident in the past. And Bitō tried to unnerve Kobayashi by recreating that situation.”
It was the sort of interpretation you'd expect from an Ellery Queen fan, but Egami shook his head.
“You're forgetting the foundation of our discussion. Kobayashi was the one who told Nobunaga all this. If it was connected to a past he'd want to keep secret, he wouldn't have spread it around.”
Mochizuki admitted “You're right,” and backed off.
We'd gone off on a tangent. I refocused my thoughts.
Bitō, the one who made the puzzle, had something to tell Kobayashi, which was the motive for the prank in his room. Judging from the items left at the scene, we could assume that the victim was Bitō. If we assumed the incident took place in Kobayashi's room, as Egami had said, the existence of a dying message proved that Kobayashi himself was not the culprit.
Otherwise, it would have been such a hassle...
“That's it, it's a hassle!” I shouted.
I had overlook an important contradiction in the traditional dying message.
“Nowadays, we all have smartphones. There's no need to leave a dying message. Just make a call or send it as a text message. Why didn't the victim do that?”
“You forgot, Alice. The screen on the phone was cracked and it wouldn't turn on,” Maria calmly explained. “Maybe the reason Bitō went to the trouble of preparing a second phone to leave at the scene was to cut off that argument.”
“Then why didn't he open the window and shout? Just say 'The culprit is Arima!', and that's all she wrote.”
“Because he had no strength. Are you trying to erase this trope from existence?”
I was about to argue that logic mattered more than tradition, but I stopped. I may have written a work featuring a dying message in the future, so I decided not to turn on my future self.
Oda started talking, as though he'd just come up with an idea.
“I realized something from what Alice just said. He wrote the dying message because he couldn't use his smartphone, but I have an idea why Kobayashi didn't get it.”
“Go ahead, Nobunaga.”
“Alright. Bitō, the victim, didn't know the culprit's name. Don't ask me why that person was in Kobayashi's room. Maybe they were a burglar. Anyway, since Bitō didn't know the culprit's name, he wrote down their physical appearance to leave a clue.”
So it was a physical characteristic. If that was the case, it made sense that there was nobody named Aoki or Aokai in their lives.
Mochizuki urged him on.
“So, what characteristic does 'Ao K' indicate about the culprit?”
“A man wearing blue (ao) clothes!”
Silence fell around the table.
“It could also be a woman wearing blue clothes,” said Mochizuki, and the rest of us followed suit. “Or it could be an old man wearing blue clothes.” “Or an old woman, that could work.” “Or an old man with an old woman.”
In conclusion, we'd successfully managed to prove that the culprit wasn't a small child.
“Shut up, it was just an example!” Oda was indignant after being hit by our combination attack. “But it does make sense. If it describes the clothing or physical characteristics the culprit had at the time of the crime, it's no wonder Kobayashi has no idea.”
Did that make sense? It was an interesting possibility, but it didn't leave us with any clues to identify the culprit.
Looking for someone named Aoki or Aokai wasn't that different than looking for someone dressed in blue. It would have been better if there was at least a picture of the suspect at the scene.
“Oh, what if there was a photo of the culprit wearing blue clothes on the smartphone? The culprit noticed it and destroyed the phone.”
But Mochizuki immediately rejected my theory.
“The smartphone was destroyed, but the essential dying message was left untouched? Why would the culprit treat the clues so differently?”
Our discussion was once again going off track.
Mochizuki said “There was some trouble between Bitō and Kobayashi. Bitō suffered as a result, and by showing Kobayashi this crime scene, he was trying to express his resentment, saying 'Look. This is how you made me feel'. But because Kobayashi doesn't feel any guilt, his intentions didn't come across.” Oda retorted “If they didn't get across, how is that any better than my theory?”
In the end, whether the dying message was a person's name, or a physical clue, or a complaint, no matter how much we, who knew almost nothing about Kobayashi, tried to solve it, we reached one dead end after another, and a sense of resignation began to fill the air.
“Come to think of it, I wonder if the calendar has any meaning.”
Maria asked the question softly, aimed at nobody in particular. The page-a-day calendar with two days torn off.
When we, who were tired of talking about things we didn't know, remained silent, she spoke more forcefully as though inciting us.
“That's right, we've been thinking about the meaning of the message this whole time, but if that was enough to get the meaning across, there would have been no need to create a murder scene. Bitō could have just written it down on a piece of paper and handed it over. There's still something we don't know. Maybe Kobayashi overlooked it.”
“Even if he did, it's been over six months since it happened. It's not like he'll be able to remember anything else.”
“Maybe you should try asking him to think if anybody has a reason to hold a grudge against him.”
“How am I supposed to ask that? Should I ask him to talk about his memories of college as interview practice?” Oda rubbed his short hair with a troubled expression.
“That's something you should think of as the one asking. When you become a full-fledged member of society, you'll have to deal with people of different ages and backgrounds every day. Think of this as practice.”
Just as I was beginning to feel sorry for Oda being subjected to Maria's unreasonable request, Egami came to his rescue.
“I agree that the information we have now is insufficient. However, it would be difficult for Nobunaga to question someone he's only ever met once. So I want you to poke Kobayashi with what I'm about to say.”
“Poke?” Oda frowned at the ominous phrasing.
“You've been saying that we don't have enough information, but allow me to rephrase it to be more precise. I believe there is information that Kobayashi intentionally withheld. He may have thought it wasn't necessary to solve the mystery. ...Bitō is likely a woman. Moreover, she's probably Kobayashi's girlfriend or ex-girlfriend.”
“What, seriously?”
Oda leaned back in shock.
“What makes you think that? I didn't have an inkling.”
“There were a few details missing from his story that struck me as intentionally vague. Putting it all together led me to the conclusion that Bitō was Kobayashi's girlfriend. First, as Alice observed earlier, it isn't clear how Bitō got into Kobayashi's room while he was out. The natural conclusion is that he and Bitō had the sort of relationship where he would trust her with a spare key.”
Egami raised his index finger, followed by his middle finger.
“Second, when Kobayashi asked Nobunaga to solve the mystery, he said 'I want to hear someone else's interpretation'. Kobayashi was a member of a mystery club, so why hadn't he asked the other club members for their interpretations? Any self-respecting mystery club would be made up exclusively of the sorts of people who'd leap at something like this. It's because he didn't want to tell the other club members about their lover's quarrel. Plus, Bitō was the former club president. There were probably things he didn't want to discuss with anyone so close.”
It sounded strange, but once he'd explained it, it seemed so obvious. Oda groaned and held his head in his hands.
“You're right, looking back, he never once said Bitō was a man. Even during his explanation, he stopped unnaturally when he was saying she was 'from the Mystery Club'. Maybe he was stopping himself from introducing her as his ex.”
The fact that he'd avoided referring to her as a man suggested Kobayashi hadn't wanted to lie.
Egami held up a third finger and said “There's more.”
“When Nobunaga asked what the message was written in, Kobayashi answered 'a red marking'. He specified that the figure was drawn in white chalk, so why was he so vague here? He could have easily specified whether it was paint, magic marker, or crayon. But if you think of a red substance carried in a woman's shoulder bag, the immediate assumption is lipstick.”
When she heard that, Maria frowned.
“The corpse of a lover lying in the room, with a message left in lipstick... This is starting to sound like a love-hate affair. It was probably a pretty heavy topic to bring up with someone he'd just met.”
I'd thought the mystery of the dying message was doomed to end in a vague un-conclusion, but things had suddenly veered off in an unexpected direction.
“I get it. I don't feel like intruding on Kobayashi's private life, but I've already set off on this path – or rather, he put me on the path himself. I'll see what I can get out of him.”
With Oda's words as the signal, the day's activities came to an end.
I decided to walk home with Maria.
Maybe it was because it had been a while since we'd last all put our heads together and puzzled over a mystery, but I felt lightheaded and the sounds of the city seemed far away. Next year, Mochizuki and Oda would graduate, and Mr. Egami would be forced out of the university. I wouldn't be able to experience this feeling ever again, but I still couldn't imagine that day. Of course, I can't even imagine what tomorrow will bring.
“I wonder what Mr. Egami will do next year.”
Maria mumbled that line for what was far from the first time.
Compared to Mochizuki and Nobunaga, who were struggling (and, admittedly, failing) in their job hunting, Egami didn't appear to have changed at all. It was as though he thought no longer being a student only meant it would be slightly harder to meet on campus.
“There's a real chance he'll start studying again in the fall so he can reapply to the school,” I said, only half joking.
When Egami was in high school, he had lost his brother and his family was torn apart. His mother, who had developed an obsession with a certain type of fortune telling, had predicted his brother's death, then left behind a prophecy of Egami's own death before herself passing from an illness.
He will not live to be thirty. He will likely die a student.
Mr. Egami continued repeating the year in defiance of that prophecy.
That was why I thought he might take the exam again. If he wanted to completely break the prophecy, he would have tried to find a way to keep his title rather than just dropping out.
That's what I told Maria as we stood side by side in the humid afternoon heat.
“Alice, will you listen to what I'm about to say? And promise never to tell anyone.”
Despite asking me, she began speaking without waiting for my reply.
“I think Mr. Egami is following the words of his late mother. If he really wants to deny the prophecy, the surest way would be to graduate. Even though they were a terrible thing, her words are the last thing his mother left behind in this world. They're the final, sorrowful connection between mother and child.”
Once the prophesied time had passed, that connection to his mother would be broken.
She may not have been a good mother. She may have been the cause of his family's downfall.
But those words were the final remnant of when his mother had been alive.
So perhaps Egami had decided not to hate her or reject her, but to cling to them as tightly as he could.
You can't break or repair your relationships with the dead.
I don't know if Maria's thoughts were correct or not. If I ask Mr. Egami, he'll just skillfully dodge the question.
So I had no choice but to respond:
“Okay. I won't tell anyone.”
The next day, at the student center. Our second period class had been canceled, so Maria and I went to the lounge to find nobody else there, not even Egami. We had an early lunch in the first floor cafeteria and returned to find that, to our surprise, the mismatched duo of Mochizuki and Oda had already saved seats for us.
Judging from the lively look on Oda's face, Kobayashi must have brought him some new insight.
When Mochizuki held him back, saying “Since we've already waited this long, let's wait for Mr. Egami,” Oda began to restlessly flip through the loose leaf notebook where he appeared to have written down the new clues.
After noon, as the population in the lounge began to increase, Mr. Egami arrived.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting. I can't believe I was the last to arrive.”
As soon as he sat down, Oda cleared his throat and began to speak.
“To skip to the end, Mr. Egami's deduction was correct. Kobayashi was dating Bitō. He was very surprised that we knew. There's a lot of extra information, so I think it would be best to go over it from the beginning.”
So, from the beginning: the internship Kobayashi took lasted from the 4th to the 6th of November of last year.
Early in the morning of the 4th, Kobayashi woke up to his alarm and had breakfast. Then, before getting dressed, he remembered that it was garbage day, so he went around his apartment, collecting all the trash he'd accumulated. The apartment he lived in was an eleven story building, and the entrance on the first floor had an autolock. The garbage drop off area was right next to the main entrance, so Kobayashi took a garbage bag and his key ring and went outside without locking his room behind him.
After taking out the trash, he returned to the door and casually reached into his pocket to take out his key ring. However, his key ring must have only been placed halfway on the holder, and they fell off, slipped through a metal grate at his feet, and fell into the drain. Even worse, the old man who managed the building next door was vigorously washing the road in front of the building with a hose, causing the keys to be instantly swept away to disappear into a concrete culvert.
Kobayashi stood stunned, but he quickly came back to his senses. He had to leave for Tokyo. Fortunately, he'd left his door unlocked, so he was able to go back and get ready.
Kobayashi followed another resident who'd come to take out their trash through the autolocked door, returned to his room, and was able to leave on schedule. On his way to Tokyo, Kobayashi contacted his girlfriend, Bitō, who worked at a publishing company in Kyoto and had a spare key to his room.
He sent her a message explaining what had happened that morning and asked her to have the spare key sent to his Osaka apartment by the time he returned from his internship. She immediately replied in the affirmative. Relieved, Kobayashi set off for Tokyo in high spirits, but...
“When he returned from Tokyo and looked into his mailbox, he saw a delivery slip for a package. He assumed that Bitō had sent him the key as he'd requested and tried to enter his room. However, the front door, which should have been unlocked like it had been when he left, was now locked for some reason.”
Oda had delivered the entire story up to now in one go, but he stopped here as though gauging our reactions. Egami asked him a question.
“Just to confirm, when Kobayashi entered the apartment building, did he follow another resident to pass the autolock, just as he had when he took out the trash?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, continue.”
Facing the locked door, Kobayashi tilted his head. Had the apartment's manager noticed his door was unlocked and locked it? No, if that were the case, he would have contacted him, the resident, about it.
Then had Bitō come all the way from Kyoto to Osaka just to lock the door? Then why hadn't she left the key in the mailbox instead of sending it by courier? Confused, the first thing he did was to call the courier and confirm that the key had arrived safely. Then, when he finally opened the door and entered the room...
“He says everything was exactly the way he described it like I told you yesterday. The only thing he didn't tell us was that the dying message was written with lipstick. Everything else was exactly as he explained it.”
“Is it true that Bitō hasn't told him the answer to the dying message?”
Oda nodded with an embarrassed look on his face.
“The day he found the scene, Kobayashi texted her 'Were you the one who did this? I have no idea what it means', and Bitō replied 'Of course you don't'. Afterwards...”
“They broke up?” Mr. Egami looked surprised.
“Apparently that's how it was. He says he deleted his messenger app account right away, so there's no longer any record of their conversation, but she was the one to initiate the breakup. The last thing she said to him was 'Thank you for everything. Please use the money in the bag for the cleaning fee. You don't need to return the books I lent you.'”
So what Kobayashi had originally introduced as a simple puzzle to solve had actually severely impacted his relationship.
I was starting to become curious about Ms. Bitō.
“Did you ask about what Bitō was like? She seems like a strange person.”
“I'm sure Kobayashi wasn't too keen on it, but I managed to get it out of him.”
Oda sounded upset with himself.
Bitō was two years older than Kobayashi, two grades ahead of him, and the former president of the Mystery Club. She was a cool woman, difficult to approach, but she cared a lot and was popular with her juniors. Kobayashi had confessed his feelings to her in his second year, and the two of them had started dating. Aside from when they published their annual book of reviews, the Mystery Club was a laid back place where the members just gathered together to chat, but during Bitō's time as president, it had been home to many die hard mystery buffs, and the club had been an intense place where many original works were published. Bitō was an ardent follower of honkaku mysteries, knowledgeable about both tricks and logic. She was also strongly opinionated about the Late Queen Problems, and would speak passionately with the other club members about the theoretical frameworks of the detective novel and whether the role of “detective” was given special treatment or it was possible to lay a path that allowed the reader to find the truth on their own.
Since Kobayashi had started job hunting, their schedules hadn't matched up as often, so they'd only been able to meet once a month, but Oda concluded his story by saying that Bitō didn't seem to have changed.
“I feel like we'd have gotten close to her if she'd been at Eito University,” Mochizuki said with a laugh, but he quickly sobered. “Can we trust Kobayashi's story? He might still be lying or keeping quiet about something. Isn't it a problem to only hear one side of the story, especially if it's between a man and a woman? It isn't fair to try drawing conclusions from this little information.”
“It's fine,” said Maria. “Nobunaga worked hard, so let's all put our heads together again.”
Egami agreed with her, saying “Yes, let's.”
“It would be correct to say that only Bitō knows the truth, but thanks to Nobunaga, a missing piece of the puzzle has been revealed, so it seems worth applying our wisdom. But before that.”
Egami pointed a long finger at the notebook in Oda's hand.
“I want to clarify about the keys. Is it correct that there are only two in total, the one Kobayashi dropped and the one Bitō had?”
“Absolutely. They're dimple keys, which are hard to copy.”
“The management company should have a spare key. Do you know if Kobayashi contacted them after losing his key?”
“He told me he explained the situation over the phone after he returned from Tokyo. Getting another copy made took a lot of time and money.”
So the management company hadn't known about the loss of the key until after his return from Tokyo.
“Alright, next. Let's clarify the movement of Bitō's spare key a little more. First, early in the morning of November 4th, Kobayashi dropped his key down the drain. Bitō definitely had the other key at that time. Two days later, when Kobayashi returned home on the 6th, the door was locked, which means that Bitō visited the room and locked it. When exactly was that?”
Oda looked at his notes.
“According to the delivery slip, the courier who delivered the key visited the room once, on the morning of the 6th. The slip was sent on the 5th from near Bitō's home in the Kyoto prefecture. The key was usable before then, so it must have been the 4th or early on the 5th.”
Egami nodded as though he'd expected the answer.
“Yesterday, we discussed how the calendar in the room had been changed to the date of Kobayashi's return from Tokyo. So it must have read the 6th.”
“Yeah. He sent me a photo of what the room looks like now, six months later.”
Oda's smartphone showed a page-a-day calendar on the wall at head height between the bookshelf and the desk. Most of the books on the shelf were paperback copies of Japanese books that looked like they'd never been touched, but on the top shelf, which was slightly wider than the others, were two books with well worn spines. Were they the two books Bitō had said “You don't need to return”?
“The chalk figure was in the center of the room. It looks like the victim wouldn't have been able to reach the calendar no matter how far they stretched their arm. I think we should interpret the date of the 6th as having a meaning unrelated to the dying message.”
Mr. Egami emphasized that, so I made a large note of it in my notes.
November 4th
Early morning, Kobayashi drops keys. Calls Bitō. Door is left unlocked.
?
Bitō visits Kobayashi's room in Osaka. Sets up scene, leaves room locked.
November 5th
Bitō sends keys from Kyoto via courier.
November 6th (Date on calendar)
Kobayashi returns home. Finds delivery slip for key. Door is locked.
I didn't know what exactly Bitō did for work, but if she received a call from Kobayashi and went all the way to Osaka the next day at the latest, it was hard to think of it as a mere prank. It also didn't match the uptight personality we'd been told about.
Maria took the lead of the discussion.
“First of all, the fact that they broke up right after the incident – can I call it that? - and the contents of the message indicate that the incident definitely had a negative impact on their relationship.”
She looked around, and Mochizuki spoke for the group.
“We can't say for sure it was negative, but it certainly didn't make things better. We can go with that. Continue.”
“Okay. The goal of our investigation is to find the meaning of Bitō's dying message, but that comes back to the problem that came up yesterday. The content of the message isn't something as simple as a person's name, but it could be Bitō's feelings or a secret the two of them share. If that's the case, there's no way for us to confirm the answer.”
Oda gave a firm nod and said “That's right. But there's no way I'm going to ask Kobayashi if he and Bitō had anything like that. I'm sure he already thinks I'm an annoying guy after how long we spent on the phone talking yesterday.”
“But after hearing what you said earlier, I realized we've been working under a huge misconception. Was this dying message even written by the victim at all?”
She said something that overturned not only the premise of yesterday's discussion, but the entire case.
Perhaps sensing my dissatisfied look, Maria explained herself.
“I have a good reason. After all, Bitō was a fan of honkaku mystery novels who thought a lot about the Late Queen Problems, right? She must have had all the contradictions of the dying message in mind.”
As Maria said, we needed to imagine how much thought Bitō had put into the scene after learning more about her.
“The question is whether the dying message was written, in part or in whole, by the culprit.”
In the culprit had stayed at the scene or returned afterwards, they would have noticed that the victim left a message. There was no way to say for sure that the message hadn't been faked or tampered with.
“If the culprit had faked it, wouldn't they have made it so the suspicion fell on someone else? Kobayashi hasn't been able to think of anyone the message could point to. I can't imagine a fan of honkaku mystery would approve of such a pointless fake.”
In response to Oda's question, Maria said “Well maybe Kobayashi's just stupid,” very rudely.
Though I didn't see the point of responding to an assumption with another assumption, I also voiced an objection.
“Psychologically, it doesn't make sense for the culprit to have falsified only part of a dying message. If you were the culprit, would you feel safe leaving the scene after changing 'Maria' to 'Maniac'? It would be better to just render the whole message illegible. And writing an entire fake message would mean taking extra effort just to risk leaving behind additional physical evidence.”
Apparently having played her last card, Maria threw up her hands in surrender.
Then Mochizuki said something unexpected.
“What if it was suicide? The 'culprit' found Bitō after she committed suicide, and faked the message to make it look like a murder. Since they were actually innocent, the risk of what Alice mentioned is close to zero.”
“You mean Bitō deliberately committed suicide in Kobayashi's room?” Oda asked suspiciously.
“If they were lovers, it would have been possible.”
I took a moment to roll Mochizuki's theory around in my head.
Although it didn't answer the question of what the message referred to, it did seem like the most logical explanation for why the culprit risked the fake dying message.
I then brought up another clue that strengthened the suicide theory.
“I'd thought that Bitō locked the door for security, but maybe she wanted to convey that what had happened inside was a suicide.”
It wasn't perfect, but it looked like we'd arrived at the best possible answer reachable with the information we had. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief. However...
“Do you think so? There is something that can't be explained by the suicide theory,” said Egami, staring at the notebook. “Did you forget? The date on the calendar read the 6th.”
We all looked confused and asked what the problem with that was. Egami spoke carefully.
“Who tore the pages from the calendar? There are two possibilities. One is that the culprit tore two days in order to destroy some sort of evidence. The other is that Bitō, the author, wanted to emphasize that the 6th was the date of the incident.”
In other words, whether it was the intention of someone inside or outside of the fictional story.
“If it's the former, it would be strange of the culprit not to destroy the pages. However, Kobayashi says that the pages were found in the same trash can he always threw them in. It's hard to imagine the culprit wanted to destroy evidence. Incidentally, the possibility that the victim tore the pages as some sort of clue to the culprit's identity can also be ruled out, since they were lying in the middle of the room, out of reach of the calendar. From this, we can say that the latter option is correct – Bitō, the author of this puzzle, wanted to convey that the incident occurred on the 6th.”
Everything Egami had said made sense. But we still didn't realize what he meant by “something that couldn't be explained”.
“Remember what we've already gone over. Bitō had already sent the key over on the 5th, so nobody had access to it on the 6th. If a suicide did take place in Kobayashi's room on the 6th, how did the person who forged the message lock the door behind them?”
The actions of Bitō the real person and Bitō the fictional victim were getting mixed up, and I became confused. Mochizuki appeared to feel the same way.
“But wait, Bitō locked the door before the delivery was made...”
“Because the real Bitō isn't really dead, we assumed that. But imagine if Bitō had actually been found dead in a locked room when Kobayashi returned on the 6th. She could have only sent the key over before her death. In other words, it's certain that she sent the key before entering the room. So who could have locked the door on the 6th? Kobayashi hadn't contacted the management company yet, so we can rule them out.”
In an attempt to organize what Egami had just said, I revised my earlier notes.
November 4th
Early morning, Kobayashi drops keys. Calls Bitō. Door is left unlocked.
?
Bitō visits Kobayashi's room in Osaka. Sets up scene, leaves room locked.
November 5th
Bitō sends keys from Kyoto via courier.
November 6th (Date on calendar)
Bitō visits Kobayashi's apartment in Osaka, commits suicide.
Someone discovers Bitō's body, fakes message, locks door?
Kobayashi returns home. Finds delivery slip for key. Door is locked.
That was how it was. Indeed, the key had already been handed over to the courier on the 5th.
So the only way for someone to get the key would be to delay the delivery from Kyoto.
“When Bitō committed suicide on the 6th, she hadn't sent the key yet and had it in her shoulder bag. If that was the case, the culprit could have used the key to lock the door after forging the message, then sent it from Tokyo themself-”
“That isn't possible either, Alice. If the key had been sent from Kyoto on the 6th, there's no way it could have arrived by the time Kobayashi returned home that same day.”
I see. And it was an undeniable fact that the key had been delivered by the time Kobayashi returned home on the 6th.
What a shame. That single calendar date had overturned the suicide theory.
No, wait, that wasn't the point. Mochizuki let out a frustrated cry.
“Mr. Egami, you're overthinking things! If the incident took place on the 6th, then the same problem exists whether Bitō committed suicide or was murdered by someone. The culprit couldn't have locked the door!”
Egami nodded gravely.
“Exactly. Kobayashi didn't realize it, but the crime scene that Bitō created was a locked room mystery from the beginning.”
This was more than I'd expected.
Originally, we'd just been trying to decipher a dying message, and I hadn't expected it to be much of a mystery. But somewhere along the line, we'd moved away from deciphering the message, and found ourselves confronted with not only the mystery of what actually happened to the victim, but also a locked room with a single key. What a complex mystery. I was very impressed with the woman who had once been president of the Mystery Club.
However, within our own Mystery Club, there were people steadily approaching the truth.
“Mochi advocated the suicide theory because it explained the dying message as something necessary to make the scene look like a murder. However, we now know that the door was locked after Bitō's death. This clearly contradicts the suicide theory. No one would be stupid enough to create a locked room at a scene they wanted to look like a murder. So we can definitively say it's a real murder. If we think about it that way, it also explains why Kobayashi's room was chosen as the crime scene. Because it fit the conditions to create the locked room murder, as Bitō was the only one with a key.”
“Wait, Mr. Egami.”
Mochizuki was a honkaku fan, but even he was confused to have a locked room thrown at him so abruptly.
“If, as Mr. Egami says, this was all planned by Bitō, that's very impressive. I have no objections to proceeding with the investigation along those lines. However, with all apologies, aren't there a bit too few clearly identifiable clues to solve the locked room?”
I understood what Mochizuki was saying.
In a novel, clues that are necessary to solve the mystery are usually described in ways that demand the reader take note of them, so as to benefit the reader, who can't investigate the scene themself. For example, if there's a scratch on the doorknob, an unusual gesture from the person who broke down the door and rushed ahead into the room, or an unnatural wet spot on the floor, they'll all be clearly explained. By thinking about those elements, the reader can narrow down the countless possibilities of “ways to lock a room”.
But in this case, all we knew was that the door and window were locked, and there was absolutely no evidence as to how the locked room was created.
As a result, we couldn't narrow down the possibilities: It was equally likely that the culprit had locked the door from the outside with some kind of tool, killed Bitō in a way that didn't require them to enter the room, or switched the locks without Kobayashi's realizing.
If Bitō was a honkaku mystery fan, it was unlikely she hadn't realized this.
Of course, there was still a possibility that there had been clues in the room, but Kobayashi hadn't noticed them.
But Egami had a different idea.
“If Bitō is as remarkable as I imagine, she must have left behind a clue to the locked room. You probably noticed this when Mochi suggested the possibility of suicide earlier, but the reason we have so few clues is because all we have of the body is a chalk outline; we don't even know the cause of death. But let's dig a bit deeper. I explained earlier why it's likely that this is a murder, not a suicide. And Alice already explained why it would be pointless for a murderer to fake a dying message. So if what we have is a genuine dying message from the victim, what can we tell about the cause of death?”
Mr. Egami fixed his eyes on me, and I began to speak carefully, just like when I was called on to speak in lecture.
“Since the victim was able to write a message, they can't have died instantly.”
“Good,” said Mr. Egami with a smile. Maria followed up.
“Based on the state of the scene, it doesn't look like she was poisoned or lost any blood. There was no sort of rope or wire left at the scene, so I don't think she was strangled, either.”
“Oh, I get it!” Mochizuki shouted. “Since there was no blood, she had to use the lipstick to write the message.”
A cause of death that shed no blood. Perhaps she was bludgeoned to death? If all the bleeding was kept inside the head, it would explain the lack of bloodstains at the scene.
As I thought about it, the problem of the locked room trick returned to me, and I let out a scream.
“I see, so it's a locked room trick where the victim took a long time to die, like a pericardial tamponade!”
Egami gave a pompous snap of his fingers, and other three, realizing what we meant, gasped.
“I don't know if she was stabbed and the culprit left the blade in the wound or if she was hit on the head. Either way, Bitō was attacked by the culprit in the hallway outside, ran into the room through the unlocked door, and locked it from the inside. She then used the last of her strength to write a dying message before expiring. If the murder weapon was still lodged in her back or she was suffering purely internal bleeding from blunt force trauma, there would be no bloodstains and no murder weapon lying on the floor. If you think about it that way, the crime scene, date, and locked room are all explained. This is the solution to the crime Bitō, the author of the puzzle, came up with.”
A corpse drawn in chalk, a date on a calendar, and a locked door. Who would have thought that the answer could be found by applying deductions to so little evidence?
I wondered how many times I'd felt this surprise since I first met Mr. Egami.
“I wonder why Bitō went to Kobayashi's apartment in the first place?”
“I can't say for sure, but maybe she remembered that the door was still unlocked after sending off the key and went to visit out of concern.”
“I see... The only thing left is the meaning of the dying message, but that's something he'll have to ask Bitō. If she was coincidentally attacked by someone in the hallway outside, it's pretty likely the culprit was someone we don't know.”
For some reason, Oda looked dissatisfied at my words and fell silent.
As I sat wondering what was wrong, Mochizuki spoke in a light, confident voice.
“I don't know what it means, but I can tell you why Bitō did all this.”
“Why she did it?”
“Yeah. She was testing Kobayashi's deductive reasoning skills. And he completely failed. That's why she lost patience with him and broke up.”
Was that really the case? For me, who viewed these sorts of puzzles as just an intellectual game, it didn't feel good seeing one used as a test to determine a person's worth. No matter how intricately designed the problem is, I think the appeal lies in the way they force people to see things in ways they otherwise wouldn't have thought of.
Or was Bitō so narrow minded that she couldn't tolerate any ideas that lay off the path she'd laid out?
“Sorry, Mochi, but I don't think that's it,” Oda said, voice serious. “I wasn't sure if I should tell you all this, but I did ask more about Kobayashi and Bitō's relationship. Since it involved digging into their personal lives, I promised I would only share if I thought it was necessary to solve the mystery. Kobayashi told me he'd thought they would break up soon even before the incident.”
“...Were either of them seeing someone else?”
“No, Kobayashi denied it, and he said that Bitō hadn't shown any signs of that, either. He just said he felt like it was ending in a way he found hard to explain. I guess it was the sort of thing only the two of them could know. Maybe the flames had died after being together for a year, or they'd grown apart after Bitō entered the workforce.”
Mochizuki replied with some difficulty.
“I realize I'm repeating myself, but that's just his subjective belief. Bitō was unhappy with him, and this puzzle may have been his last chance.”
“Well, I guess I can't deny that.”
Oda leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head as though there was nothing left to discuss.
Listening to the two of them, Maria muttered something.
“So if Kobayashi had gotten it right, would Bitō have kept dating him? Is love really something that can be turned around so easily?”
Her lonely voice made me think back of what she'd said on our way home yesterday.
I think Mr. Egami is following the words of his late mother.
“Didn't Bitō reply to Kobayashi's question by saying 'Of course you don't'?”
It wasn't until the four of them turned to me that I realized I'd said it out loud.
I hadn't had time to gather my thoughts, but it looked like I had no choice but to stumble my way through.
“Kobayashi wasn't able to arrive at the answer, but I don't think that was wrong. I think Bitō just wanted to see what answer he'd give.”
“Isn't that still testing him?”
I shook my head at Mochizuki.
“Bitō felt the same way as Kobayashi. She knew their relationship would be ending soon. But neither of them were dissatisfied enough to dislike the other, either. That contradiction greatly shook Bitō's worldview. Bitō was a devout lover of honkaku mystery novels, and was particularly knowledgeable about both logic and the metafictional construction of narrative paths to the truth – In short, she was a woman who hated when reasoning was unclear.”
No one objected. It seemed I was being allowed to continue.
“Kobayashi explained the reason for their breakup as a feeling that couldn't be explained. But Bitō couldn't accept that. Perhaps she, being so serious and logical, felt that it wasn't fair for their relationship to end without a clear reason. So she started searching for evidence that their relationship was already broken. Something that could be perceived with the naked eye. Then, she got a call from Kobayashi saying he'd lost his key.”
The mystery itself may have been something she'd come up with during her time at the Mystery Club.
Whatever the case, Bitō went to the apartment in Osaka, ready to take advantage of the sudden opportunity.
“For Bitō, whether Kobayashi was able to arrive at the correction conclusion didn't matter. As our discussion has demonstrated, this mystery has many branching pathways the investigation can go down. So it didn't matter if he went off in some direction she didn't expect. She just wanted to know how much of her mystery Kobayashi would put up with. But the message he sent her was...”
Were you the one who did this?
I have no idea what it means.
Those two lines made it clear that he didn't have any interest left in Bitō. Perhaps when she saw that, she was finally able to accept the decision to break up.
Somehow, I'd made it through my theory. I took a deep breath.
When I looked over to Egami, he was still looking down at his notes, which made me a bit uneasy.
“Was there anything wrong with what I just said?”
“No, there wasn't. I had a vague idea that Kobayashi's reaction was the key, but I'm impressed by how well you were able to explain it all. And thanks to you, I think I've found the answer to the dying message.”
“Really?”
Everyone was excited as Egami picked up his pen.
“It's simple. The message was written in English letters.”
The letters A O K appeared on the notepad.
“We were so caught up in trying to read it as a dying message identifying the culprit that we missed the meaning right in front of us. It all made sense to me after I heard what Alice just said. Here's what it says.”
He drew a single sharp line on the message.
A-OK
“It was a message that whatever he decided on is OK. Bitō had a deep knowledge of the mystery genre, so she must have known that a dying message has countless interpretations. That's why she didn't care about leaving one that pointed towards the culprit. Like Alice said, the important thing was how much effort he put into finding his answer.”
It was a beautiful ending.
To the very end, I'd been overwhelmed by Bitō's dedication to mystery.
As Mochizuki had said, if she had gone to Eito University, what sort of impact would she have had on the lives we'd all lived for the past three years? It was a shame the way the S. University Mystery Club had become a loose gathering of book lovers without her.
“So what are you going to do now? Will you tell Kobayashi our conclusion?”
Oda shook his head at Mochizuki's question.
“I can't just tell him 'you should have thought a little harder about the mystery'. I'm sure Bitō predicted this outcome when she set up the mystery. All I can do is tell him the movement of the key, the solution to the locked room, and the dying message are one possibility we came up with.”
“I think that's a good idea,” Maria nodded. “Both of them are already on their own paths.”
The other members gave no objections.
With our long quest for the truth at an end, Egami said “I'm going to take a smoke” and left the lounge. Since the student center was a non-smoking area, Egami must have been uncomfortable.
Maria and Mochizuki started talking about the new Anthony Horowitz book that had come out last fall.
I needed to rest my brain after all that thinking, so I lazily watched as Oda typed and deleted messages to Kobayashi on his smartphone. At the rate he was going, it would be a pretty long message. I hope he doesn't think the entire Eito University Mystery Club is made up of annoying people.
Then, my eye coincidentally fell on the icon of the person he was messaging.
“Nobunaga, you are talking to Kobayashi, aren't you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Did he change his icon?”
Yesterday, it had been a dark mask, but now it was a picture of the sun setting over the sea.
“I noticed it this morning.”
Oda went back to composing his message without giving it any further thought.
Why had Kobayashi changed his icon? It wasn't hard to imagine that the two days we'd spent trying to solve Bitō's mystery had caused him to remember all sorts of things. Perhaps his previous icon had been related to his memories of Bitō.
A black mask. Something was prickling in my brain.
You don't need to return the books I lent you.
The books. That's right, they were in the picture of the calendar.
“Sorry, but can I see the picture of the calendar again?”
Oda complained about my sudden request, but I begged him to let me borrow his smartphone.
I looked at the picture again and zoomed in on the two well-used books on the corner of the shelf.
The Black Death Mansion Murder Case from Gendai Kyōyō Bunko.
The Complete Works of Poe, Vol. 3 from Sogen Mystery Bunko.
When Kobayashi and Oda had been talking about the Mystery Club, Kobayashi had said that he'd once wanted to write a novel, but had given up. If those two books were the ones he'd borrowed from Bitō, had he been planning to use them as references for his own novel?
The works contained in The Complete Works of Poe, Vol. 3 included The Masque of the Red Death.
Could his previous icon have been inspired by those two works?
And Egami had also...
“Hey, you don't think...?”
Oda looked at me as I stared frozen at the screen.
It must have been a coincidence, a product of my imagination.
Just because we were in the same sort of club as Kobayashi and Bitō, that didn't mean we had to go down the same path.
Even if our seniors did leave the university while Maria and I stayed behind, I knew we'd be fine. No matter how many years passed. Without a doubt.
“What's the matter, Alice?”
Mr. Egami, who had gone out for a smoke, returned looking refreshed.
I forced myself to smile and told him.
“Please hurry with your novel. I'm really looking forward to it.”
Alice Arisugawa was born in 1959 in Osaka. In 1989, he debuted with Moonlight Game: The Tragedy of Y '88. He won the 56th annual Mystery Writers of Japan award for The Malayan Railway Mystery in 2003, the 8th annual Honkaku Mystery Award for The Castle of the Queendom in 2008, and has placed in the top ten of the Weekly Bunshun Mystery Best 10 seven times, the This Mystery is Amazing! rankings six times, and the Honkaku Mystery Best 10 twelve times, including two first place rankings. In addition, he was the founder and first president of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan and at time of writing sits on the selection committees of three different literary prizes. Works of his officially available in English include The Moai Island Puzzle and the J-drama Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa.
Mitsuda Madoy's vtuber model was primarily inspired by Hideo Himura's character design. He did not tear up when Alice admitted to being afraid that he was replaceable, shut up. His Bluesky is https://bsky.app/profile/mitsudamadoyvt.bsky.social and he streams on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/mitsudamadoy