Once again, everyone is questioned about their alibi. Hoshizono reasons a bit. He says that the kettle alarm system wasn't functional. He is correct.

 

Once again, everyone is questioned about their alibi.

Hoshizono reasons a bit.

He says that the kettle alarm system wasn't functional.

He is correct.

They returned to the dining room in a single line like a funeral procession. Mikiko waited for them alone, head hanging down, sitting at a table of Chinese-style okonomiyaki that sat cooled and forgotten.

“What was that noise? Hey, was Mr. Zaino really...?”

Before anyone even had time to sit down, Mikiko barraged them all with questions. Hoshizono answered for the group.

“Yes, Mr. Zaino was killed, just like Mr. Iwagishi.”

“I see...”

Mikiko scrunched her makeup-free face and cradled her head in her hands, her brown hair spilling down. Hoshizono watched her as she began to sob, then stood. 

“There's no more avoiding it. Everyone, this is an emergency situation. It's beyond question that both Mr. Iwagishi and Mr. Zaino were murdered. There is no one else in the area, and it's impossible for someone to have come or left from the outside. We have no choice but to conclude that someone in this room is the murderer. There is no doubt that the killer is among us.”

Hoshizono's words made Yumi look around. When her eyes met Kazuo's, she quickly looked down. She plainly considered him the culprit.

Hoshizono continued.

“So, just as I did yesterday, I would like the culprit to come forward if at all possible. I don't want those who aren't involved in this case to be subjected to undue stress. In a situation like this, where we don't know when rescue will arrive, our fear and anxiety is only increasing. Once the police arrive, the culprit's identity will be made clear. Remaining silent will accomplish nothing but straining the nerves of those who have nothing to do with your crimes. So before something bad happens, please turn yourself in.”

Hoshizono's ask was calm, but nobody responded. Everyone sat as though in a daze and ignored Hoshizono's words. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. It was as though they feared that the slightest word would result in them being accused on the spot.

Seeing their expressionless reactions was making Kazuo irritated. The culprit wasn't making this easy on any of them... Seeing Hoshizono's handsome profile just made him want to complain more.

“I see. Well, I didn't expect someone who could take two lives so easily would obediently admit to their crimes...”

Hoshizono shook his head in disappointment.

“Well then, let's at least eliminate another possibility. Kazuo.”

“Sir.”

Kazuo immediately shot to his feet.

“Could you please tell me about what you overheard on the night of Mr. Iwagishi's murder?”

“Ah, yes.”

Everyone turned suspicious eyes to Kazuo.

“Well, on the first night, I was on my way to Mr. Hoshizono's lodge, but I took the wrong path by mistake.” 

Kazuo explained what he'd seen and heard that night. As he spoke, he saw surprise ripple through the onlookers. He secretly watched Asako's reaction, but all he saw was her eyes widening with interest in a way that conveyed no specific emotion.

“This was coincidentally overheard by Kazuo.”

When Kazuo was finished speaking and sat down, Hoshizono took back over.

“If anyone was in the lodge at that time, or if you know who was, please come forward now.”

“What are you talking about?” Akane asked in shock. “That must have been the culprit!”

“So, Sugishita, you really can't remember whose voice it was?”

“No, sorry. I'm annoyed with myself-”

“Well, we can't do anything if you can't remember, but more importantly, what were you thinking, keeping something so important from the rest of us?”

Akane looked more amused than upset. Hoshizono gave her a gentle response.

“Because we couldn't completely rule out the possibility that it was a secret meeting that had nothing to do with the case. We didn't want to intrude on their privacy. We thought as long as it was an unrelated event, we could ignore it... But the situation has changed now. If anyone here claims to be the owner of the voice Kazuo heard, please come forward now. If you claim that you are not the culprit, but that you were talking to Mr. Iwagishi at the time, I would like to know so that we can properly organize our information.”

Once again, nobody answered. Everyone looked away from everyone else. It was like they were in a meeting they didn't want to be at and were praying it would end soon – uninterested, irresponsible, and just tossing ideas around without any enthusiasm. Their attitude made Kazuo's blood boil. 

“Why are you all staying quiet?”

Without realizing, he'd stood up.

“There's no doubt the culprit is here. Who is it? Why did you do it? Why did they have to die!?”

He pounded his fist on the table. The sound of his own voice pushed him even further. The regret that he'd been the one to get Zaino drunk and let his guard down was fueling the flames of his rage.

“God damn it, who's the culprit!? Tell me! Don't you feel bad, sitting there in silence like a coward? Why did you kill them? They had families, they had CHILDREN! Why did they have to die? Just confess already! Well? Answer me! How could you do such a terrible thing!?”

“That's enough, Kazuo.”

He didn't notice Hoshizono come up behind him until he put a hand on his shoulder.

“I understand how you feel. Everyone here is thinking the same thing. Of course, that includes myself. I can't repress the anger I feel at the criminal. But anger won't lead us to anything. I understand that.”

In the face of his gentle admonishment, Kazuo's emotion slowly faded.

“Ah... I'm sorry.”

Now he only felt embarrassed. He was ashamed that he'd let out his frustrations in a tantrum like a child.

“It's nice to be energetic, but let's try and stay calm, young man.”

Akane gave him a flirtatious wink. 

“I-I'm sorry.”

Kazuo quickly sat down. Yumi's cold glare, as though he were a barbarian, hurt to meet.

“Yes, let's all stay calm,” Hoshizono said as he pretentiously strut back to his seat.

“Let's think this through. The weather seems fit to ensure that the police won't be here any time soon, so, fortunately – or, rather, unfortunately – we have plenty of time to work through this. It would be for the best if we found the culprit ourselves.”

“Yes, fortunately – or, rather, unfortunately – we have plenty of time, and not much else to do with it,” Akane said, lighting a cigarette.

“For now, let's start by investigating our alibis. If someone has an alibi this time, that will reduce the number of suspects.”

“I agree,” Hoshizono nodded. Akane said,

“I'm pretty sure Mr. Zaino was killed last night, since he was hanging out here until we all left.”

“We need to narrow down the possible time of death. Who was the last to see Mr. Zaino alive?”

At Hoshizono's question, Yumi timidly raised her hand.

“I think... it might have been us. Hey, Miki, what time was it when we fell asleep?”

“Um, I don't really remember...”

Mikiko shook her head. Yumi was talking about last night's sudden drinking party.

“I think it was probably around two when we fell asleep.”

“It was at half past two,” Kazuo said.

That was around the time that the drinking party had ended and Zaino went up to the staff room. Remembering the way Zaino's back had looked at the time made his heart ache all over again.

“At 2:30, then?”

Hoshizono struck his signature one-finger-up pose.

“From 2:30 to this morning... Well, we can think of it as the general period of 'at night', just like yesterday. Does anyone have a clear alibi for that period of time?”

“Of course we don't, that's late at night. I was all alone with my word processor.”

At Akane's words, Asako also said:

“Me too. I was alone in my lodge. I couldn't sleep, but I didn't go anywhere.”

Sagashima also firmly shook his head. Hoshizono shrugged.

“I suppose so. At that hour, I was also asleep. Perhaps it would have been better if we'd stayed up together all night like Mr. Zaino suggested.”

“There's no point in saying things like that now,” Akane said with a sigh.

Mikiko took a sip of sake.

“But... I'm safe, right? Cuz I have an alibi – I was sleeping next to Yumi the whole time.”

But Yumi's response was blunt.

 “I don't know about that. I was asleep, but Mikiko might have secretly woken up without me noticing.”

“You're the worst. In that case, Yumi could have been the culprit, too.”

“You just said I was sleeping.”

Hoshizono raised one hand to stop their bickering.

“Now, now, let's all calm down... There's no point in fighting over possibilities. Now, we've confirmed that everyone had at least a chance.”

“Well, just like yesterday, the alibis were a dead end.”

Akane took a long drag of her cigarette. Hoshizono responded.

“The culprit snuck into the staff room after the end of Kazuo's party. He hit the sleeping Mr. Zaino with a kokeshi doll, rendering him unable to resist, then used a makeshift rope made by twisting his pants to strangle him to death.”

“A kokeshi doll?”

Asako sounded surprised.

“Yes, you and Ms. Kusabuki couldn't see it from where you were, but there was a kokeshi doll lying behind the stove at the scene. There was blood on it, so I think it was the murder weapon.”

“A kokeshi doll... Come to think of it, there was one on the counter.”

Asako's whisper jogged his memory. Kazuo had thought he'd seen that kokeshi somewhere before. It had been on the counter by the entrance when he arrived.

“Ah, that's right, it was by the entrance.” 

Akane also remembered it. Kazuo quickly stood up.

“I'll take a look.”

He ran from the dining room.

He ran down the hallway to the front door. As expected, the kokeshi doll on the counter was gone. He went back to the dining room and reported.

“It's gone. The kokeshi isn't there anymore.”

“I see...”

Hoshizono stylishly snapped his fingers.

“Does anyone remember when that kokeshi doll disappeared? That might help us make sense of the culprit's actions.”

“I wonder...” Akane said, stubbing her cigarette out on the ashtray.

“I feel like I saw it last night, but I'm not sure.”

“How about the rest of you? Does anyone remember seeing it?”

“I'm... I'm not sure either. I'm sure I saw it the day before yesterday, at least.”

Asako turned her head. Yumi looked unconcerned.

“Was there something like that there? I had no idea.”

“I don't remember it either,” said Sagashima, raising his eyebrows.

“I see, so we don't even know when the culprit prepared their murder weapon.” 

Hoshizono sounded upset. Akane lit a new cigarette.

“What I'm really curious about is that kettle.”

“The alarm?” asked Sagashima.

“Yeah, that,” Akane nodded.

“When Mr. Zaino went to bed last night, he told me he'd 'set up a little trick'. I guess that's what he meant,” said Kazuo.

He remembered the cue he'd placed against his own door. Kazuo had also made a makeshift alarm system from the objects at hand. It seemed they thought the same way.

“But why is it still up there? I'm surprised it didn't fall when the culprit went inside.”

When Akane said that with a face of dissatisfaction, Hoshizono responded.
“I think it didn't go off at all.”

“It didn't?”

“Yes, if it had, the sound would have surely awoken Kazuo, who was in the mattress room with only a single wall between them. Well, Kazuo, did you hear that noise?”

“Ah, um, well, I was on the second floor all last night. I wanted to keep an eye on the lodges to make sure no suspicious figures went in.”

Kazuo began rambling, unable to say that he'd specifically been watching Asako.

“In the end, I fell asleep, but I'm sure if it were that loud, it would have echoed through the entire building and made me jump out of my skin. But I didn't hear anything like that.”

“I see. And what about you two? Did you hear that sound while you were asleep in the parlor?”

When Hoshizono asked them, Mikiko looked back at him with a blank stare.

“You mean that terrible racket we heard earlier?”

“Yes, that's the one.”

“Nope, not at all.”

“I slept fine, too.”

Mikiko and Yumi both shook their heads.

“But if that noise had rang out, do you think it would have woken you up?”

Hoshizono kept prodding. Yumi nodded.

“I guess it would have. We were both really scared.”

Akane nodded again.

“I see, that's what you're getting at – since none of you heard it, that means it didn't fall last night. No matter how deep asleep they were, at least one of them would have woken up.”

“That's exactly it.”

Hoshizono loosely folded his arms.

“Mr. Zaino may have been a bit too confident. He thought that even if he fell asleep, as soon as he woke up, he'd be a physical match for the culprit – or at least, that he wouldn't go down without a fight. He had a knife on hand for self defense and set up an alarm on his door, so it's not surprising he wasn't worried. Besides, there were three other people staying under the same roof as him. I can't imagine Kazuo, Yumi, and Mikiko would have conspired to kill him. If they heard the sound, they would have been awakened as well, and at the very least, I'm sure Kazuo would have run to check on him.”

“The truth is, the reason Mr. Zaino and I wound up drinking like barbarians in a fantasy novel was because we both left our rooms to investigate the noise we heard in the dining room, and at the end, we both thought that since there were two more people sleeping in the parlor, nothing would happen.”

At Kazuo's interjection, Hoshizono nodded with a smile.

“That's why Mr. Zaino was able to sleep with peace of mind. However, even though he could set up the alarm, he couldn't test it. Because there was another person sleeping in the same building as him, this administration building. If he made too much noise during his experiments, there was a risk that the culprit would discover the device's existence and sneak past it. So all he could do was place the phone books on the umbrella stand and hope that was a precarious enough pedestal. Unable to experiment any further, he placed the kettle on top and went to bed with satisfaction – a fatal mistake. As you all saw earlier, the kettle got caught on the door frame, which I believe happened because the kettle shifted a bit when the murder entered the room. The culprit likely did get caught on the thread and move the kettle, but contrary to Mr. Zaino's intentions, it only moved a few centimeters and didn't fall. Our killer has the devil's own luck – or perhaps it's the rest of us who are unlucky.”

“I understand. You're probably right, the alarm was a dud.”

Akane interrupted Hoshizono's speech.

“But there's still something I don't get. The thread was still taut when we saw it. What does that mean? If the culprit got into the room, the thread should have broken on their body. Sugishita, you didn't do anything with it before we went in, did you?”

“I didn't. I didn't even see there was a thread, so I was surprised.”

Kazuo was also surprised that Akane had suddenly asked him that. She continued.

“Well in that case, it is strange. It's true it got stuck on the frame and didn't fall, but in that case, the culprit must have gotten caught in the thread at least once to shift the kettle to hit the frame. In that case, it's strange the thread isn't broken.”

“I see, that's weird. The thread was completely taut,” said Sagashima.

 Kazuo had an idea. 

“In that case, couldn't the answer be something like this? The culprit touched the thread, and the kettle shifted and hit the door frame. Then, the culprit noticed that the alarm had been set and stepped back. What do you think? That would leave the alarm in the same state it was in when we found it.”

However, Akane wasn't impressed.

“That's impossible. How could they have noticed the alarm?”

She shot it down in a flash.

“That thread was set at chest height. The criminal must have touched it with their chest. Do you really think such a thin thread would survive being pushed far enough that a person could feel it through their clothes? Which leaves us back where we started: It's strange that the culprit didn't notice it until after they got caught. Once a thread like that gets caught, it will snap without any resistance.”

“What are you saying? Did the culprit know that the alarm was there from the beginning? That would explain how they were able to stop themself after the kettle shifted.”

“Get your act together, young man! If they knew it was there from the beginning, what was the point of moving the kettle?”

“Ah... I see.”

As Kazuo dtood chastened into silence, Sagashima came up next to him.

“No, no, I think it is possible that they knew from the beginning. The murderer must have known that it was there and avoided it. Setting aside the misalignment of the kettle, that's the only way to explain how the thread was unbroken. It was at a height where the culprit could have easily ducked under it, after all.”

“But our answer won't be complete until we understand why the kettle was stuck.”

Asako was hesitant to speak up, but Akane was quick to follow.

“As Hoshizono said, the most natural conclusion is that the kettle was caught on the door frame because the culprit got caught on the thread and it shifted. But if the culprit knew about the alarm, they wouldn't have gotten caught on it. That would mean Mr. Zaino set the kettle with its spout caught from the beginning. But that's absurd, because nobody would ever deliberately set a useless alarm on their own room.”

“No, that's not what I meant,” muttered Sagashima. “The reason the kettle shifted was because Ms. Kusabuki broke the thread.”

“Me?”

“Yes, when you entered the room earlier, you pushed the thread out of the way and it snapped. That's when the kettle got stuck. When you pushed the thread, the kettle shifted. Well, in any case, it didn't go off. In other words, the culprit never touched the string. If you think about it that way, you can only assume that the culprit knew about the alarm from the beginning. That's how they were able to duck underneath it.”

“And how did the culprit know that?” Akane asked.

Sagashima finally looked up.

“I guess they must have asked Mr. Zaino himself. There's no other way to know in advance what was in the room – unless he told them.”

“No way,” Akane said at once. Kazuo supported her.

“I don't think so, either. It doesn't make sense for him to have warned someone about his trap. Even when he was talking to me after we'd drank together, he only said he'd set up something. There's no way someone could have predicted this alarm system from that. Why would Mr. Zaino have only revealed something to important to the criminal?”

“Because the criminal was the only one he trusted,” Sagashima said with utmost confidence.

Akane immediately jumped on that.

“Trusted them? Who? Was there anyone left here Mr. Zaino thought he could trust?”

“Doesn't look like it... But that thread's still there.”

Sagashima was as lethargic as ever.

“It's strange. If the culprit didn't know, the string would have been broken, and if they did, then they'd be the only one to know. Oh, but there's a window, isn't there? If they went in through the window, then that would explain why the string wasn't broken. The whole alarm system would be irrelevant.”

“No, that window doesn't open,” Asako said apologetically. “I just checked.”

“Haha, no, it's fine. I thought it was a good idea, but... Oh, it's so simple! Yes, yes, it's so simple, I have no idea how I didn't see it before now.”

Sagashima sported a prideful smile.

“What's so simple?” Kazuo asked, leaning in to listen.

“It's simple: The culprit walked right on through the door without touching the thread.”

“So the criminal did know about the thread?” Akane asked, but Sagashima took his head.

“No, that's not it. The culprit didn't know about the alarm, but they were still able to walk through.”

“But at that height, anyone would get caught in it,” said Kazuo.

Asako elaborated.

“There's no one here who's short enough to pass under that thread. I'm the smallest person here, but even I would get hit in the throat if I tried to go in.”

“No, no, that's not it.”

Sagashima was grinning.

“The humanoid alien race called the Grays, believed to come from Arcturus in the Taurus constellation, stand less than a meter tall.”

Akane almost fell out of her chair. Asako blinked several times. Kazuo, of course, couldn't keep his mouth closed. He'd forgotten that this old man couldn't tell the difference between reality and his delusions. He was a fool to have ever taken him seriously.

“More of this?”

Yumi's eyes were full of fear.

“I don't know if it's a murderer or an alien, I just want all this to stop. Why do people keep getting killed, day after day? Why do weird things keeping happening at the crime scenes? I'm sick of this!”

Hoshizono soothed Yumi, who was kicking her legs in her chair.

“Calm down, Miss Yumi. I agree, this is a serious situation. If things continue like this, none of our nerves will survive. I don't know who the culprit is, but I ask them to stop subjecting we who have nothing to do with your targets to all this. I'm going to ask one more time: Please, confess – or rather, please, let us know it's all over. If you've accomplished your goal by killing Mr. Iwagishi and Mr. Zaino, please reassure the rest of us that we can rest easily. Physically and mentally, we're at our limits. Please, somehow, will you clearly tell us the incident is over?”

Again, Hoshizono's sincere plea went unanswered except for the lonely sound of the windows shaking in the wind. The silence was broken by Yumi kicking out of her chair and getting to her feet. She arrogantly declared:

“Enough of this. I'm leaving.”

 

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