Chapter Nine: Demo Playtest, Day Two, Answer Time ②, Scene One

Saturday, November 23^rd, 2024, 8:55 P.M.

“This round's contestant is... Fuwa Shinichiro! Which incident will you be starting with?”

Six people were gathered around the round table in Megalodon Manor's lounge.

Because Answer Time had to be held in the real world, the monitor on the round table was once again projecting a 3D image of the VR space.

Fuwa looked painfully stiff as he answered “Let's start with the MICHI case, then.”

“No problem. Please, state the full name of the person you're accusing.”

This time... the reasoning once again began with the incident created by Kamo.

As expected, Fuwa firmly declared “I'm going to expose Kamo Touma. I'm going to repeat Mr. Munakata's reasoning as the basis for him being the culprit of the MICHI case.”

Kamo gave up and just smiled.

“That's nothing... but how did I do it?”

“There are two questions that need solving. First, how did you render the avatar MICHI unconscious after she walked into the warehouse? Second, how did you barricade the warehouse door with a rubber dinghy and a shelf from the inside, making it a locked room?”

As expected of a private investigator with experience solving numerous cases, Fuwa laid out his deductions in a much more organized way than Munakata.

Seeing that Kamo had nothing else to say, Fuwa continued. “There may seem to be two puzzling problems, but in fact, they have the same root and the same origin. As long as one is solved, the other can be solved along the way.”

It was clear now... that was something that only someone who'd seen through to the truth could say.

Kamo struggled to control his expression, but he couldn't keep his face from draining of blood. Fuwa narrowed his eyes with a grin and continued “Let's start with how the avatar was rendered unconscious. It's actually quite simple. The cause of MICHI's collapse was a lack of oxygen.”

“Lack of oxygen?” the victim, Michi, asked. Fuwa nodded.

“That's right. As I said, Mr. Kamo drained the air out of the storeroom, causing your avatar to enter a state of hypoxia.”

Michi didn't seem to understand right away. Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn't speak. Fuwa gave her a sympathetic look.

“Large airliners fly at an altitude of ten thousand meters, and that high in the air, the air pressure can get as low as 0.25 atmospheres. In that low pressure state, the human body will instantly fall into a state of oxygen deprivation and lose consciousness in a short period of time.”

Michi reflexively covered her ears.

“Is that why my character's ears were bleeding?”

“Bleeding from the ears and nose are both symptoms of exposure to ultra-low-pressure environments. Travelers feel pain in their ear canals when sitting in a cabin where the air pressure has changed, so I'm afraid your character couldn't stand the sudden decompression and ruptured her eardrums.”

“And the chills all over my body before I fainted?”

“Explaining that requires a bit of specialized knowledge. Expanding the air in a state where there's no transfer of heat between indoors and outdoors causes a drop in temperature due to adiabatic expansion. Applied to this event, the air pressure inside the storeroom rapidly decreased, and the temperature followed suit. Of course, what the real Ms. Michi felt was only the amount of cold that the VR operation suit could simulate.”

In the face of this completely accurate explanation, Kamo forced himself to remain calm. “It's true the storeroom has an air distribution control feature... but do you really think it would be able to draw enough air out of the room to lower the air pressure until it could knock someone out?”

“It's the only way to explain the avatar MICHI's unconsciousness without using poison. Mr. Kamo, you have to admit that the door to the storeroom isn't exactly normal.”

Saying that, Fuwa pulled up an image of the storeroom door on the 3D monitor.

In addition to the round doorknob, the door was fitted with an integrated lock which opened and closed by turning a wheel like on the door to a submarine.

“These integrated door locks usually double as handles. The music classroom at my old school had one like this. They're often used in places where soundproofing is required. In other words, they're locks that are highly airtight.”

Hearing his words, Kamo felt a cold sweat bloom on his back. He couldn't think of a retort, so there was nothing he could say.

Michi thought for a moment and interjected “I see, all the other interior doors in Puppet Hall have either gaps or cat flaps, so there's absolutely no airtightness whatsoever. It's weird that the storeroom is the only room fitted with an iron door with a submarine lock, it's like it was perfectly made to create a low-pressure environment.

...This is bad, this is bad, this is really bad.

Once the truth was out there, the Murderer had no more room to struggle.

Knowing that resisting like this was pointless, Kamo desperately pondered how he could derail the current path of the conversation. Meanwhile, Fuwa gave him a terrifying grin.

“After locking the victim in the storeroom, Mr. Kamo used his smartwatch to turn the air control system to empty the room of air. After about five minutes, the air pressure in the storeroom was lowered to the point that would cause unconsciousness, at which point the avatar MICHI fainted.”

Reasoning seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing. His words flowed without a single pause.

Kamo just sat to the side and watched, falling deeper into an abyss he was powerless to escape.

His plan had been seen through. Instead of waiting to die, it would be better to just give up and admit it... The memory of Rena and Yukina was all that stopped him.

Fuwa continued unflinchingly “After the avatar MICHI fell unconscious, you quickly refilled the air to the storeroom.”

Even though he knew it was useless, Kamo tried to retort. “...How?”

“On the map, it says that Megalodon Manor is equipped with an exhaust system, while Puppet Hall has air distribution control. From the beginning, I wondered why they used different terms for the air system... In fact, the exhaust inside Megalodon Manor can only remove air from the room, while the air conditioner in Puppet Hall can add it.”

Azuma said with wide eyes “An air supply system to transport fresh air into the room, right? It's true that if the air distribution function was used, the air pressure in the storeroom could be restored.”

Fuwa nodded with a grin.

“That's right. Mr. Kamo used the air conditioner to send in a large amount of air, quickly restoring the air pressure inside the storeroom. Once the air pressure had risen to an acceptable level, he entered the storeroom, strangled the avatar MICHI to death, and dragged her body to the back of the room... How's my reasoning so far?”

It was so accurate you'd have thought he'd seen it done. There wasn't a single hole in his logic.

Kamo suddenly started laughing at himself.

...What am I even thinking? Right now, I shouldn't want to poke holes in Fuwa's logic. If he's right, then as long as he can also solve the remaining two incidents, it'll be total victory for the Detective Team. Then everybody wins!

“Why are you laughing?”

When he returned to his senses, Kamo realized that Fuwa was staring at him with a somewhat fearful look. Kamo shook his head.

“No, I just realized that I can't find any way to rebut you.”

Fuwa's expression suddenly turned to one of scorn, and he continued to explain his deductions.

“Next is the method of the locked room. Actually... this also utilized the air conditioner and the exhaust in the storeroom.”

Then, Yuki spoke up with a rare biting tone. “It's true that using the air conditioner to increase the air pressure inside the storeroom would create a pressure differential between the inside and outside and make it impossible to open the door. However, that doesn't apply to this incident.”

“Why not?”

“Because before we discovered the body, the storeroom door wasn't immobilized. I was able to push it open a few millimeters.”

Azuma immediately joined in the rebuttal. “He's right, I even crawled down on my stomach to try and see into the storeroom through that gap.”

“Right? Even if it's only a few millimeters, as long as there's any gap, the pressure difference between the kitchen and the storeroom will vanish and the door will be openable again.”

Although Yuki's claim wasn't wrong, Fuwa immediately replied in that same sympathetic tone.

“You fiction authors always over-complicate things, and that's why you usually fall over. Creating this locked room was actually very simple... and it was a trick that could only be done in a VR space.”

Kamo couldn't help but close his eyes.

...He's right. There wasn't any pressure difference between the kitchen and the storeroom at the time. And when I locked the storeroom door, I did use a simple trick that was only possible in VR.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the 3D monitor displaying an overhead image of the storeroom. Fuwa continued.

“When Mr. Kamo inflated that rubber boat, he only filled it to an eight of its total capacity, so it wasn't fully inflated. Then it could easily be flattened and placed in the space behind the door, right? That way, even if the shelf was placed 45 centimeters away from the door, the dinghy wouldn't block the exit.”

That was exactly what Kamo had done last night.

The storeroom door could only be opened 30 centimeters or so due to the obstruction of the shelf and the flattened rubber dinghy behind the door. But that was enough to allow a thin person to pass through. Kamo carefully avoided the doorknob as he walked sideways from the storeroom into the kitchen.

He made up his mind and threw out what would probably be his last question.

“If the rubber boat wasn't fully inflated, the door should have been able to open much further when Yuki and Kenzan pushed it. But something inside the storeroom was blocking the door. How do you explain that?”

Fuwa scoffed and raised his hand to point at the 3D display.

“As you can see, the air conditioner's hole is directly across from the storeroom door, so the strong winds blowing from here would hit the door.”

“............Huh?”

Kamo didn't understand, and his whole body froze. After a moment, the realization dawned in his head, and his head fell into his hands.

Since Kamo suddenly stopped speaking, Kenzan asked a question instead.

“So, do you mean... the door couldn't be opened because of the wind's force?”

“Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

After saying what sounded like a declaration of victory, Fuwa raised his index finger at Kamo.

Kamo had to stifle a groan.

Unexpectedly, at the last possible moment, Fuwa had fallen for his own lack of common sense, and his deduction had veered wildly off course.

By all accounts, this was the worst case scenario.

Fuwa had given a wrong answer and was about to face defeat and death. No, maybe Kurata would let him keep deducing a while longer, but that would only be delaying the inevitable.

Meanwhile, Kamo was forced to fulfill his obligation to present his counter-evidence. That would be fine if it was just overturning a wrong theory. The problem was that Fuwa's theory was 80% correct.

If he wanted to make a counterargument, he just needed to overturn that last 20%. But... Kamo wasn't sure that he could prove with evidence that Fuwa was wrong.

But the most crucial problem was that even if his counterargument was successful, he had no way back.

Any of the other detectives could reason out the last 20% of the truth and solve the entirety of the MICHI case with just a slight change of perspective.

...What do I do in a situation like this?

Fuwa, unaware of Kamo's racing thoughts, began to draw a diagram in the notebook. It was the same book that Munakata had left on the round table after giving his theory.

 

Fuwa put down his pen and nodded fervently.

Michi looked at his diagram and said “I see. The rubber boat, being deflated, would have been blown like a sail, and the wind would be able to seal the storeroom door with just a rubber boat.”

“Mr. Kamo turned off the air supply feature when we tried to break down the door. With no more wind blowing on the door, it was instantly slammed open, and then the door just pressed against the rubber dinghy and hit the shelf inside. Just a bit of subtle positioning to make sure the shelf would cut the rubber dinghy when it fell, and it was perfect.”

“As long as there's a hole in the dinghy, there's no way to tell how much air was originally inside.”

“This is the truth of the MICHI case.”

Fuwa looked at Kamo without even blinking. He was still convinced that his reasoning was flawless.

Feeling helpless, Kamo slipped on a glove controller.

“Unfortunately... your theory is wrong.”

After saying that, Kamo operated the 3D monitor to show the shelves along the walls facing the storeroom door.

“On the top panel of the shelf directly in front of the air conditioner, there are two puppets.”

Kamo moved his fingertips and quickly zoomed in on the bloody dolls. It was the red and purple clown puppets in the tuxedos.

The moment they saw the puppets, everyone except Fuwa stirred.

Fuwa was the only one who kept his cool and confidently asked “So what?”

“The puppets in Puppet Hall have a certain amount of weight to them, so ordinary air conditioner breezes definitely wouldn't be able to knock them down. But switching to a wind strong enough to force a door closed, that would be another story. If the air conditioner was really blowing that much wind at the time, the puppets on the shelf would definitely have been blown off. But... we didn't find any puppets on the storeroom floor when we found the body of the virtual MICHI.”

Showing those bloody clowns was a high risk maneuver for Kamo. But it was the only defense he could think of.

Yuki nodded reassuringly next to him.

“Great, that proves the door wasn't blocked by the wind's force.”

However, Fuwa's face still wore that same smile.

“I believe they call this 'being too smart for your own good'. You think I didn't notice those clown puppets? Those two puppets prove that the air conditioner was used in the crime.”

Kamo felt cold sweat under his glove controller. Yuki skeptically asked “Proof?”

“As you can see, there's blood on those clown puppets. At first glance it kind of looks like it's decorative, but don't you think it actually looks more like real, drying bloodstains?”

The moment he heard those words, Yuki sucked in a breath.

“Is that really blood...?”

“Ms. Michi said that her avatar was standing inside the room facing the storeroom door when she fainted, and it just so happens that that's where the shelf with the two clowns was located... You all can tell what happened now, can't you?”

Azuma took over.

“Before the virtual MICHI was murdered, the Murderer used the air conditioner to restore the air pressure inside the storeroom. But he had to finish the crime before the oxygen-deprived virtual character regained consciousness... Then a large amount of air must have been blown in in a short period of time. At that time, the puppets were blown to the ground by the wind from the air conditioner, right?”

“That's right. The puppets that fell to the ground were stained with the blood from the avatar's nose, so Mr. Kamo applied more blood to them in an attempt to disguise it as decorations that were there from the start.”

Recalling the scene when he'd committed the crime, Kamo once again couldn't help but close his eyes.

At that time... he'd seen the clown puppets and frozen in shock.

He quickly realized that they'd been blown down by the wind from the air conditioner. No puppets had been in the building during the testing stage, so he hadn't looked at them carefully and assumed that the situation would be the same during the actual crime. You could only call it an oversight on his part.

...No doubt those puppets were deliberately placed there to stop me from committing the crime.

Faced with those two puppets, Kamo was in a dilemma.

Should he put them on another shelf and try to trick everyone? Should he take them back to his room? Or should he put them back where he found them? Perhaps it would be safest to bring them back to his room and mix them up with the other puppets. But... combined with where Michi had been when she fainted, there was a good chance that she had seen those puppets on the shelf.

If she was as confident in her memory as Kamo was in his, the odds that she'd remember the clown puppets were high.

After a moment's hesitation, Kamo decided to put the clown puppets back in their original location.

Luckily, the two clown's tuxedos were purple and red, so getting blood on them didn't change the color that much. There shouldn't be anyone who'd remember the puppets' clothes in that much detail, so it was safe to say that noticing the change was almost impossible.

...I didn't expect that Michi would wind up not remembering the puppets at all, but I still made the right choice, didn't I?

Kamo regained some of his composure and made his counterargument.

“How you want to explain it is up to you... but none of it changes the fact that those clown puppets were on the shelf when the body was found. The fact that neither was on the floor at that time is proof that your theory is flawed, Fuwa.”

Upon hearing this, Fuwa let out a loud laugh.

“Failing to spot the puppets while activating the air conditioning was certainly a mistake on your part... but you aren't the sort of fool who'd make the same mistake twice in a row, are you? After the first failure, you could have just moved the puppets somewhere they wouldn't be blown off again.”

“...Huh?”

Kamo wasn't a little kid anymore, so he didn't get angry every time he heard someone say something stupid. But he was in a position where he had to disprove this stupid reasoning.

Kenzan crossed his arms and spoke up. “I'd like to ask, does anybody remember where those clown puppets were when we found the body?”

Nobody answered.

Fuwa continued smugly. “Mr. Kamo quietly moved the puppets back in front of the ventilation hole when he was investigating the storeroom. There aren't any ladders in the storeroom, but you're nearly 180 cm tall, so you could have reached the top just by stretching out your arm, right?”

If Munakata were still alive, he could have proved that Kamo hadn't moved those clown puppets at that time. That was because he had known Kamo was the Murderer from the beginning and had been closely monitoring his movements. However, thinking that now was useless.

Kamo closed his eyes again.

Whose words or actions... could be the turning point that can resurrect my counterargument?

Kurata's gleeful voice resounded through the lounge.

“Then, it's time to declare Kamo's defense a failure–”

“You said earlier that those two clown puppets were 'two weird dolls on that shelf', right? What did you mean?”

Kamo suddenly opened his mouth and asked Michi, and even though his question wasn't clear, Michi immediately answered.

“Oh, I tried to move the puppets when I was checking the A/C, but for some reason those two were a bit stuck to the shelf. I moved them with a bit of effort.”

Kamo got the answer he'd expected, and after a slight smile, he asked Kurata something.

“There should be blood on top of the shelf in front of the air conditioner, can you show that on the 3D projector?”

Kurata answered him with an unpleasant silence, and then the screen quickly showed the puppetless top shelf.

It wasn't easy to see due to the walnut color of the wood, but the thin layer of dust did show bloodstains left by the hips and legs of the two puppets.

Kamo pointed at those bloodstains and continued “It looks like nobody's examined the top of that shelf. The blood left on that shelf proves that puppets were replaced immediately after getting blood on them, and afterwards, it can be proved that they were already on this shelf last night.”

Fuwa's expression twisted and warped as he retorted “That's nonsense! You just made the rookie mistake of putting the bloody puppets back on the top shelf. But you quickly realized that they'd prevent you from carrying out your locked room trick, so you waited for the blood to dry before you moved them somewhere else.”

“That isn't possible... When MICHI was investigating, those clown puppets were stuck to the top shelf, and that's because the blood had dried into the dust and gotten sticky. In other words, those puppets were placed on the top shelf before the blood dried, and they weren't moved until Michi took them away.”

It had been a mistake on Kamo's part to put the puppets on the shelf without waiting for the blood on them to dry. But by pure chance, that mistake had come back and saved his life.

“Then the blood on the clown puppets dried and stuck so firmly that the air conditioner's wind wasn't enough to blow them off!”

Fuwa's tone grew more heated, and the precision of his arguments plummeted.

Kamo sighed and said “Michi also said earlier that she took down the dolls with 'a bit' of effort. I'm afraid that level of stickiness wouldn't be able to withstand a wind strong enough for your theory.”

Fuwa finally fell silent and lowered his head, his teeth clenched.

Previous Chapter                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Next Chapter