A sober dinner. Afterwards, Kazuo has an investigation meeting with Hoshizono. There is one piece of supremely important foreshadowing in this chapter. Don't miss it.
A sober dinner.
Afterwards, Kazuo has an investigation meeting with Hoshizono.
There is one piece of supremely important foreshadowing in this chapter.
Don't miss it.
When they emerged from the underground tomb, they found Hoshizono and the others waiting for them in the parlor. Though Sagashima being quiet and gloomy was normal, Kazuo thought that the sight of even Yumi and Mikiko sitting in silence was such a drastic change from last night that it seemed to suck all the oxygen from the room. Even if it was a bit disruptive, they were supposed to be laughing and chatting with each other.
It had already gone fully dark outside, and the only sound was the window glass rattling from the wind.
As Kazuo and Zaino approached, Hoshizono raised his marble statue face.
“Thank you for your hard work. By the way, Kazuo, how were things outside?”
“Ah, right. Sorry, but we didn't see the slightest trace of outsiders hiding anywhere.”
Kazuo stayed standing as he gave his report.
“I see. So, that means there's no one around but us.”
Hoshizono said that under his breath, but Yumi jumped as though he'd screamed.
“Then, the culprit really is...”
She cut herself off, probably afraid of attracting the attention of Zaino, who was standing behind Kazuo like a shadow.
At that moment, Akane and Asako returned.
“So what are we doing for dinner?” Akane asked leisurely.
“A fair question. In a siege, a raid on the food supply is no laughing matter,” said Hoshizono.
Asako offered.
“I'll take care of it. It might not be much, but...”
“All right then, girl, if you please.”
Akane nodded, making Asako smile.
“Mr. Sugishita, will you help me out?”
“Yes, of course!”
Kazuo was happy to accept.
The two of them went to the kitchen, but Asako's claim that their efforts “might not be much” were neither modesty nor exaggeration. They didn't have any stocks of fresh meat, fish, or vegetables, but with Asako's ingenuity, they were able to prepare a sort of Chinese-style okonomiyaki by mixing flour, which for whatever reason they had in abundance, with leftover eggs and frying the result in sesame oil and soy sauce, topping it with canned tuna and peas. Asako was embarrassed by the results, but Kazuo was impressed by what she'd managed to accomplish. In an odd coincidence, because they'd cooked them in a round pan, the pancakes had come out in the shape of stereotypical UFOs.
The smell of sesame oil filled the air as they served them in the dining room, and everyone managed to drag themselves to their seats.
“Hey, you didn't poison these, did you?”
Yumi said something insensitive, and, understandably, Asako looked annoyed. That girl was making a habit of saying useless things... Kazuo couldn't keep the anger from his voice.
“I'm pretty sure she couldn't kill you all even if she wanted to.”
He took a demonstrative bite of the saucer-shaped pancake.
The meal passed uneventfully, with no further unnecessary comments. They had plenty of alcohol, but nobody asked for it. It seemed nobody had any appetite; they just moved their chopsticks like animatronics. Sagashima, who seemed to be on a different wavelength from the rest of humanity, was the only one to show any strength.
After finishing a half-hearted meal, Zaino stood up to prepare coffee. Asako brought out the first aid kit and began to change Sagashima's bandages. As he handed out the coffee, Zaino made an announcement.
“Seeing as there are no suspicious figures in the area, I don't believe we are in any further danger, but just in case, I think it would be wise to spend the night awake, keeping tabs on one another.”
His face was calm and even. With his sharp ninja glare, it was impossible to tell if he was genuinely concerned or planning something.
“Hmm, I don't know...”
Akane rubbed her side.
“I feel like it wouldn't change anything either way... Hey, girl, how long do we have until Novel Lady?”
“It's this Friday, so only two more days.”
Asako replied instantly while still mummy-wrapping Sagashima's fingertips.
“Then I have to work. It's not like anything'll happen tonight, anyway.”
At Akane's declaration, Yumi spoke in disagreement.
“I'm afraid something will happen... That's why I'd rather be alone...”
She didn't want to spend the night with a murderer. Sagashima also brushed his greasy hair and said
“Well, cattle mutilation rarely happens twice in the same place, so we probably aren't in danger.”
His flat tone was deeply unpersuasive. Zaino's expression didn't change.
“I see. If that is your decision, then that's fine.”
Everyone looked at each other. The atmosphere was tense. They'd lost all group cohesion. They stared at each other as though trying to read each other's souls. Kazuo should have just said there was evidence of someone lurking around outside. Even if it was a lie, it was better than this.
“Aaah, I want to take a shower.”
Mikiko groaned in disgust. Come to think of it, Zaino hadn't announced any intentions to take a bath tonight. The quality of service was clearly degrading. Of course, with the sponsor dead, the project was D.O.A., so there was no need to please the guests any longer.
“Can I at least come with you, ma'am?”
Asako asked as she put away the disinfectant after treating Sagashima.
“Hmm, I wonder...?”
Akane thought for a while.
“No, I have work to do, and you know I can't write with other people around. Just get yourself some rest, girl.”
“...Yes, ma'am.”
Asako gave a nervous nod. Yumi quickly got out of her chair.
“I'm going to turn on the TV again, there might be something on the news.”
She ran off at once. Hoshizono shrugged as he watched her go.
In the end, everyone spent the night separately. Frightened by the shadow of the unknown culprit, they let their fear rule them, and they scattered like rats.
That night, Kazuo went to Hoshizono's lodge. The wind showed no signs of letting up, roaring as it blew against him with great force. However, there wasn't much snow. Compared to what was going on on the ground, it was miraculously calm.
When he arrived at the lodge, Hoshizono appeared to be expecting him and greeted him with a dazzlingly white smile. After they settled down around the snow, Kazuo immediately spoke.
“Zaino wasn't lying. The avalanche was real.”
“Is that so?”
Hoshizono held both hands over the stove.
“So our being trapped here was an unforeseeable coincidence.”
“Without question. And since there's no evidence of a culprit having snuck in from outside, I can only assume that the killer is one of us.”
“You're right, we have no choice but to treat that as a proven fact. Incidentally, Kazuo, while you were out I did some thinking.”
As if to demonstrate, he placed a finger on his forehead. The light from the stove illuminated his face, making him look like a sculptor's masterpiece.
“About those footprints. I know what I said during the day, but there is another way to interpret them.”
“Another way?”
“Yes. I still think there's no doubt that one of those sets belonged to Mr. Iwagishi, but the remaining sets don't necessarily need to belong to the culprit. They may have belonged to the other party in the argument you heard.”
“I thought they were the culprit.”
“Yes, that's possible, but it isn't the only possibility.”
Hoshizono lowered his voice.
“Perhaps it really was just a meaningless quarrel, as you initially believed, and was unrelated to the murder. However, because of what happened afterwards, the other person felt unable to come forward and admit their presence at the crime scene. That's another possibility, and it would mean those footprints have nothing to do with the murder and were just the result of an innocent third party leaving the scene.”
“But sir, if that were the case, what happened to the culprit's footprints? There weren't any other prints there, and no signs of any trick being used, so how did they manage to leave the lodge? It's impossible.”
“Yes, and therein lies our problem.”
“It's not like they just grew wings and flew away, and I don't think they could have made a standing long jump from the from the lodge to the path, it's too far.”
When Kazuo said that, Hoshizono gave an ironic smile.
“I'd never claim such a thing. But, Kazuo, when we went to the site, there was another set of footprints.”
“There was?”
“The footprints of the man who discovered the body, Mr. Zaino.”
Hoshizono paused for a moment.
“When we arrived, Mr. Zaino's footprints were already there. Listen to me, Kazuo, that means there are two new possibilities. One is that Mr. Zaino is the culprit, and in the middle of the night, he committed the murder, then when he left the administration building in the morning, he carefully stepped in his own footprints – he covered his own footprints by pretending to be the first discoverer. The other possibility is that the lodge wasn't the scene of the crime.”
“It wasn't?”
Kazuo was surprised, but Hoshizono kept his voice calm as he continued.
“I'm still just speaking in hypotheticals. If it wasn't the crime scene, then it doesn't matter where the footprints were – and the use of the ice axe and rope could have been a trick to make us think the crime scene was the lodge.”
“But that's where the body was.”
“When Mr. Zaino went to the lodge, claiming he was going to check on the oversleeping Mr. Iwagishi, he carried the body he'd hidden somewhere in advance with him, then pretended to have just discovered it. Thus, he falsified the true scene of the crime, and could pretend to be the first discoverer without leaving any suspicious footprints. If everything had worked out, he could have created a classic 'no footprints in the snow' case, though in actuality the footprints of the person who quarreled with the victim prevented that.”
Kazuo was a bit amused. Here was a guy who thought all sorts of strange things.
“Those are interesting theories, but unfortunately, they're both wrong.”
“How do you figure?”
Hoshizono looked curious.
“I saw Zaino going to the scene while I was standing on the balcony. He was empty-handed, and of course he wasn't carrying any dead body. And the snow was fresh and unbroken, no footprints at all.”
Kazuo remembered the scene when Zaino had been heading towards the lodge. He walked on the snow, staggered by the wind. There was nothing suspicious about him at the time, and there were no footprints in the snow except the ones he was leaving behind him.
“I see, that's valid information.”
Hoshizono agreed easily.
“Then we can reject both those theories. In that case, then it seems there are no possibilities except that those two sets of footprints belong to our culprit after all.”
He spoke slowly and crossed his arms. With his long legs also crossed, he looked like a model posing to be sketched.
“In the end, we're back where we started, and the voice I heard was the culprit after all.”
“That does appear to be correct... Unfortunately, we have no data with which to narrow things down further.”
Kazuo was also thinking about that.
“If I could just remember who it was, then that would be fine, but that isn't possible. And since it was after dark, nobody has an alibi. Everyone said they were alone after 11:00.”
“Yes, everyone had an opportunity,” said Hoshizono.
“In that case, the only angle left to consider is motive.”
And with a smug gesture, he placed a finger in front of his face and pointed to the ceiling.
“Sir, your finger.”
When Kazuo looked accusingly at the finger pointed to the ceiling, Hoshizono hurriedly pulled it back.
“Ah, excuse me... More importantly, what do you think of the motive, Kazuo?”
“Motive, huh?”
After thinking on it for a moment, Kazuo answered.
“Judging from what I saw at the station yesterday, it looks like Sagashima had never met Iwagishi before, which means Ms. Kusabuki is probably in the same boat, and by extent, Ms. Hayasawa, too.”
“That leaves us with Mr. Zaino, Miss Yumi, and Miss Mikiko.”
“Yeah, it sounds like those two met Iwagishi in a store somewhere and there was trouble.”
“Trouble between a part-time hostess and her customer? I wonder what sort of trouble that could be...”
“Didn't he just make a pass at them or touch one of them on the butt?”
“Would they really have killed over something like that?”
“Well, no, but... They knew him longer, so you must agree that they're more suspicious than Ms. Kusabuki and the others, right?”
“That's true enough, but at this stage, we don't have enough information to make a judgment. We have no choice but to hold off for now.”
“But I still feel like Zaino is the most suspicious person here. I don't have a clue what he's thinking, but he's strange. He's so hard to read, and it wouldn't be surprising if he had a motive, considering he was the victim's subordinate at the company. When we went down to the basement earlier, do you know what he said?”
“No, what?”
“Something along the lines of 'Don't make fun of me, deputy director of accounting at Yamakanmuri is a position of great importance' and so on... I'm sure he had a problem with Iwagishi. He seemed extremely dissatisfied that he was made to play the role of a servant.”
“I see. That's very interesting.”
“That's why I think Zaino's suspicious.”
“So you agree with Ms. Kusabuki's theory, do you, Kazuo? But...”
Hoshizono leaned forward a bit.
“The argument you overheard took place in a private lodge at night. Since they were sneaking around like that, there's a possibility they were hiding their true relationship with Mr. Iwagishi. It's possible they were only pretending to meet for the first time today... In an extreme case, we also have to take into account the possibility that the culprit developed their motive after we all arrived here.”
“They found a reason to kill him after we arrived? Did something like that happen?”
Kazuo went back over the events of yesterday, but he couldn't think of any time such a motive could have come up.
“He certainly wasn't a pleasure to be around, but I don't see any reason why someone would want to kill him.”
“Me neither.”
Hoshizono admitted it casually.
“I suppose it's impossible to say the motive as to why Mr. Iwagishi was killed, but I think it's a bit hasty of you to declare Mr. Zaino the most suspicious just because he worked for the victim.”
Kazuo looked at Hoshizono, who appeared to be enjoying the sound of his own voice.
“Then what about starting from the method of the crime, sir? I think it would be hard for a woman to do that.”
“Would it?”
“Yeah, because he was strangled to death. I don't know if a woman could do that.”
“Don't jump to conclusions, Kazuo. He was knocked unconscious by a blow from an ice axe; anyone could have killed him like that. Besides, one end of the rope was tied to a leg of the bed, so they could have easily killed him by pulling the other end with both hands.”
“Ah, you're right.”
Kazuo nodded, but he was upset. His real goal had been to get Asako, who was small and fragile looking, off the suspect list, but it didn't appear to be going well.
“Then what about this?”
But he regained his composure quickly enough.
“Outside, there are the two paths shoveled in the snow, the right path and the left path.”
“There are.”
“Between those two paths is a wide area of unshoveled snow, and there were no footprints in it. Nobody went through there.”
In other words, there was no sign that anyone had gone from one path to the other. Iwagishi's lodge was on the left path, so if someone from the right path side had gone there, Kazuo figured they should have left footprints. The idea had occurred to him while he and Asako were investigating the area. Kazuo figured that, since there were no footprints connecting the two sides, the culprit couldn't be anyone from the right path side.
However, Hoshizono gently shook his head.
“No, I don't think you can say that with certainty.”
He rejected Kazuo's limited wisdom.
“Why not?”
“Whether the culprit went to Mr. Iwagishi's lodge with intent to kill from the beginning, or whether they just had a secret conversation that escalated – either way, they'd want to do all they could to keep anyone from knowing they were there. In that case, they wouldn't want to disturb the snow beneath their feet any more than necessary. In fact, the two lines of footprints we saw both went directly from the lodge to the path and back. It's more natural to assume that the killer didn't want to leave unnecessary footprints, and thus avoided walking on the snowfield between the left and right paths. There's a path under the eaves of the administration building, so it would be logical to assume they went by that route.”
“Ah... That does make sense.”
In fact, Kazuo had taken that exact route the previous night. After realizing he'd made a wrong turn, he hadn't cut across the snowfield, but gone back the administration building and gone the long way around. In Kazuo's case, he just hadn't wanted to walk on the cold snow, but the murderer had a considerably more compelling reason. If there had been footprints there, the route the culprit took would have been apparent at once. There was no way the culprit would have done something so stupid. It seemed his limited wisdom wouldn't be enough.
“Even though I asked you to come out here, we've made no progress at all. I thought that if we pooled our knowledge, we could find something new, but instead, we've just buried each other's ideas,” Hoshizono said regretfully.
“You're right.”
Kazuo nodded. As things stood, anyone could have been the culprit and there was no way to narrow things down. They didn't have any clues, they didn't even have clues to where to find clues. Not only that, but their distress had gotten worse, and nobody knew when they would be able to escape. Everyone's nerves were being stretched to the breaking point.
Feeling irritated, Kazuo stood up. On the back wall, there were those unfashionable decorations... Without realizing, he'd approached them. An ice axe, a lantern, and a nylon rope – those three pieces of mountain climbing equipment hung above Kazuo's head, near the ceiling. Kazuo stared blankly at the three items that had recently been used as tools of murder. The lantern was dirty and sooty like the one at the crime scene, reminding Kazuo of the gruesome sight. The ice axe was a bit different in shape from the one used in the crime, with a longer tip, but it was still the same type of weapon as the one used to hit Iwagishi last night. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. As he casually reached out to hold it...
“Kazuo.”
Kazuo turned around at Hoshizono's harsh voice.
“Do you read mystery novels?”
Hoshizono's eyes were a bit sharp.
“No, I don't read all that much. Why?”
“Situations like this often appear in novels. A group is trapped in the mountains, and in that inescapable situation, people are killed – more often than not, in large numbers.”
“Are you saying there's going to be another murder?”
Hoshizono answered bluntly.
“No, I'm not. I don't think something from fiction will actually happen – this isn't a mystery novel.”
His voice was sharp, too. His unclear attitude further aggravated Kazuo. There was no way something so novel-esque could happen in real life, it was ridiculous... No matter how many times he told himself that, Kazuo couldn't shake off his worries.
“More importantly, sir.”
Trying to shake off the unpleasant feeling in his chest, Kazuo forcefully changed the subject.
“I'm extremely curious about that crop circle. Sagashima was investigating the snow to see if it was radioactive. Do you think it means anything?”
“Ah, you're still going on about that.”
Hoshizono grinned at him.
“Do you think a UFO came down? Aliens tried to kidnap Mr. Iwagishi, but when he resisted, they burned him to death?”
“Well, of course I don't believe something like that happened.”
“I see, then... Listen, Kazuo, you can't let yourself be distracted by trivial matters like that. The culprit is trying to confuse us. If you get lost thinking about it, you'll have fallen for the enemy's trap. And if you get lost in the weeds, you'll never be able to see the truth.”
And then, Hoshizono paused for a moment.
“But we can't see the truth. There must be something we're overlooking, something important, but we don't know what it is. I'm frustrated, Kazuo. There must be a clue there, but I can't see it. It's frustrating.”
Although he was dramatic as usual, Kazuo felt that Hoshizono's anguish was very close to his own.
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