Chapter Eight: Main Island: Countermeasures (3)

A little after 5:00 A.M., Tara crouched down and let out a growl.

Seeing as how he'd never done that before, Yuki felt a sudden spike of anxiety and opened the door to the hall.

By then, Tara had returned to his usual self, and immediately started barking at Yuki. Yuki looked down the hall... and saw a dark puddle in front of the restroom.

Yuki felt the blood drain from his face.

“Is that blood?”

While Saijou held Tara's leash, Yuki and Mikumo hurried down the hall. Yanagawa said she'd wake Shigaraki and Motegi and went back to the multipurpose area. It was somewhat dark at the end of the hall, but not too dark for Yuki to see his own feet.

Yuki approached the restroom and crouched down, being careful not to step in the puddle of red. As soon as he did, a distinctive smell hit his nose.

“What? This isn't blood, it's wine.”

He sighed with relief, and Mikumo narrowed her eyes.

“I'm pretty sure Producer Kikyo said he spilled some wine while he was in the restroom.”

“He did, didn't he? Maybe that noise we heard was him dropping the wine bottle on the floor.”

The hallway was covered in gray vinyl flooring, and the red wine had already spread into an oval shape on top. It looked like it was already starting to dry.

Just to be sure, they used the flashlight to check, but nobody had left any wine footprints anywhere.

Apparently, Kikyo had managed to retrieve his wine bottle without stepping in the puddle.

By the time Yuki had finished his search and stood up, everyone except Kikyo had gathered in the hall.

Tara started spinning in place and raising a racket, but his cries met only sleep-deprived ears. They had no choice but to send Tara to the waiting room. Ignoring his furious barking, Saijou grabbed him by the collar and led him away, tying him to the window's bars. By then, Tara had managed to tire himself out, and he lay down on the waiting room's floor.

When silence returned, Shigaraki mumbled something anxiously.

“With all the commotion in the hall, why hasn't Producer Kikyo said anything?”

He'd given voice to everyone's thoughts.

Yuki knocked on Kikyo's door. He prayed the producer was just asleep, but there was still no response from inside.

When he opened the door, he was greeted by the exact scene he'd feared.

The first thing that caught Yuki's eye were two empty wine bottles lying on the left side of the room. The next were the red puddles that had formed near the monitor and the recording equipment... The work light lit them clearly.

However, his gaze slid right over them. His eyes were stuck to the tent at the back of the room.

Kikyo lay on the ground, bleeding from the chest.

Yuki checked for a pulse, hoping that, somehow, he was still alive. His prayers were in vain. Kikyo had no pulse, and the body cooled beneath his fingertips.

...Beaten to it again.

The shock was too great for Yuki to even stand.

The whole reason he'd come to Kakuriyo Island was to take revenge for Naoko. But what had he even accomplished? The only part of his plan he'd managed to carry out properly was destroying the satellite phone, and all that had accomplished was risking the lives of people who had nothing to do with his revenge.

Otherwise, he'd spent the whole time doing ridiculous things like trying to protect his targets from a murderous monster... and he hadn't even managed to do that right.

Saijou realized that something was wrong with Yuki and looked down at him nervously.

“Are you okay?”

Unable to find the words, Yuki slowly rose to his feet and was barely able to nod.

Ever since they were children, Naoko had been the sort of person who always stood by what she believed was right.

Even if she looked eccentric from the outside, she always made sense to herself. That hadn't changed when she became an adult... and it had gotten her killed by those three.

What would she have done if she'd come to Kakuriyo Island and encountered the Visitor? Yuki didn't even need to think about it. She would have stopped the Visitor from escaping the island and creating any more victims, even if it cost her her life.

There was still something Yuki had to do. He had to make sure there were no more deaths...

He took another look around Kikyo's room.

Kikyo's body was lying in the tent. There were no signs he'd resisted. His clothes weren't the least bit disheveled, and other than the usual single stab to the chest, he had no visible injuries.

Searching the tent, Yuki found the unopened wine he'd seen before, as well as the transceiver and crowbar... and also a butcher's knife, all sitting in a row.

Shigaraki hissed something.

“That's the knife I brought for the barbecue. What's it doing here?”

“He must have taken it without you realizing. Maybe he wanted it for self-defense.”

Saijou said that, but Yuki wasn't entirely convinced.

“Aren't both of those weapons a bit much for self-defense? Especially the knife.”

“...You're right.”

“It looks like Producer Kikyo was killed in his sleep. There are no signs that he resisted.”

Shigaraki responded with an expression that could have been sorrow or surprise.

“To fall asleep at a time like this... It's all because he drank that wine.”

Yuki agreed. Kikyo usually had strong enough alcohol tolerance that he could have easily downed several bottles of wine without problem, but adding that onto the physical and mental exhaustion he was already experiencing may have pushed him over the edge.

Next, Yuki examined Kikyo's clothes.

Yesterday morning, he'd changed into a dark blue hoodie and black cotton pants. As a result, it was difficult to tell just by looking whether the stain was just blood or something else.

His worn out sneakers had been tossed beside the tent and now lay on their sides. Yuki recalled that Kikyo often wore the same sneakers around the TV station. They were black with pinkish-gray rubber soles.

Yuki picked up the sneakers. They were a bit worn, but had almost no dirt on them at all. They looked like they'd just been cleaned.

After pointing that out to the others, Yuki began to search Kikyo's belongings.

A lighter and a crushed pack of Six Stars sat in the pockets of his pants. There was only one cigarette left. Another pack of cigarettes, wrapped in plastic, was in his chest pocket.

“This new pack of Six Stars is something you gave him, right, Mr. Saijou?”

Remembering what had happened last night, Saijou nodded with a complication expression.

“Poor guy. He was killed without even getting a last smoke.”

As Yuki kept searching the pockets of his hoodie, he found something unexpected. Shigaraki's eyes widened.

“Wait a minute, isn't that Ms. Mikumo's medicine?”

Just as he said, the medicine cases looked familiar. The yellow one marked “stomach medicine” didn't appear to have lost much, but the blue pack of “sleeping pills” was almost empty.

The sight sent Yuki's mind racing. He didn't understand anything anymore.

Saijou, who appeared to have also been lost in thought, spoke up.

“Come to think of it, wasn't Producer Kikyo complaining about a stomach ache earlier?”

“That explains why he stole the stomach medicine. But what about the sleeping pills? They seem oddly low.”

Shigaraki asked that pointed question, but Saijou could only respond hesitantly.

“I don't think Producer Kikyo took them.”

“What, because he said having insomnia was better?”

“...Maybe the flushed them down the toilet.”

When Yuki said that, Shigaraki and Saijou both looked confused. He explained.

“That man wasn't just suspicious of the Visitor, he was suspicious of everyone. That's why I think he took the sleeping pills away so nobody could use them to drug him. But as he was throwing them away, he decided to keep a few for himself, just in case.”

Yuki suddenly realized that the two of them were staring at him.

“I've been thinking this for a while now, but... Mr. Ryuuzen, you're quite the detective.”

“Really. You looked just like Sherlock Holmes just now.”

Saijou and Shigaraki said that with straight faces. Yuki couldn't do anything but smile... In truth, even he was surprised that he'd managed to come up with the hypothesis so quickly.

“Stop it, you two. Flattery will get you nowhere.”

Having dodged the question, Yuki gently pushed the bag containing Fuwawa to the side and put Mikumo's medicine in the pocket of his jeans.

Next he checked the window.

It had been opened a crack to give the cables space to pass through, but he saw nothing abnormal about the bars or the glass. There were more than 50 centimeters between the window and the tent, and further still to the body, so it wasn't possible that the Visitor could have inserted its needle into the body from outside.

“Ah, this ain't good.”

He turned around when he heard Yanagawa's voice. She was looking at the monitor with a defeated expression. Looking closely, the recording equipment was in a worse state than he'd expected. The Visitor had stabbed it with its needle several times, then poured red wine all over it.

Yanagawa spoke with a heavy voice.

“We might just be able to pull some footage out if'n we take the whole thing apart, but I don' know how to do nothin' like that, and neither does Saijou. Well, even if we did, it's not like we could do anythin' with the equipment we got on a deserted island.”

Motegi's voice came from the hall. Apparently he'd been able to hear them.

“The reason the Visitor destroyed our records... it can only be because it was seen approaching the crime scene by the camera. That is why it destroyed the record of its movements before fleeing the scene.”

Only half listening, Yuki shifted his attention to the empty wine bottles lying on the floor. Both bottles were of the same brand, but only one had wine stains on the label. 

Yuki remembered that, after spilling the wine in the restroom, Kikyo had said he “had more in the tent.

If the bottle with the stained label was the one he'd dropped and brought back from the hallway... then the other one had either been opened by him to drink, or been opened by the Visitor to destroy the recording device.

With the crime scene investigation complete, Yuki went out into the hall.

He thought it was strange how Motegi, who was always so eager to insert himself into discussions about the investigation, hadn't set foot in the crime scene.

He saw Motegi leaning against the wall. It looked like he couldn't leave the hall because standing for too long aggravated his wound. His face was still tense with pain.

Mikumo was standing next to him. Apparently she had decided to stay in the hallway so that the immobilized Motegi wouldn't have to be alone.

Yuki spoke to her.

“Just to be sure, I'm going to search the building again. Ms. Mikumo, Mr. Motegi, wait here.”

Then, the remaining four performed a thorough search of the former community center.

The Visitor had made a habit of burning bodies, but it still hadn't laid a hand on Koga. He looked exactly as he had when Yuki and the others covered his body with the bath towel last night. Yuki folded the towel and set it next to the body. There was nothing unusual inside the two remaining containers of gasoline in the room.

They checked both small rooms, the hallway, the multipurpose area, and the waiting room, and confirmed that no suspicious animals or metallic objects were anywhere to be found.

All that was left was the restroom. Yuki and the others entered, stepping around the puddle of wine. There was no sign of the Visitor there, either.

Mikumo peeked her head in from the hallway to check on their progress.

“Have you found any clues yet?”

At that moment, Yuki was examining a stain on the wall to the left of the restroom's entrance. He pointed his flashlight at it... it looked like a small amount of wine that had splashed onto the wall. (See Figure 1)

“That must be from when Producer Kikyo spilled the wine.” 

Mikumo spoke sadly, and Yuki nodded.

“I think so too. ...Let's finish up here and head back.”

Returning to the hall, Yuki spoke to the five people gathered there.

“This crime is more sophisticated than the last few... Apparently, the Visitor absorbs knowledge and memories every time it drinks blood, so I think it's gotten smarter since it killed Director Unno.”

Yanagawa gave a vigorous nod.

“Maybe, but that still don't explain how it got into the bossman's room. There was a plum loco dog by the name of Tara in the hall, so there shouldn'a been any way past his watch.”

She was right. Dogs had the ability to see through a Visitor's disguise and would bark at them, and Tara barked at everyone he saw anyway. Whether it was the Visitor or not, there was no way they could have entered Kikyo's room without Tara making a racket.

In fact... every time someone went to the bathroom, Yuki and the others watched Tara's movements through the door. It wasn't something they'd agreed upon, but the unspoken understanding had held firm. Of course, Yuki definitely hadn't heard Tara bark a single time while someone was in the bathroom.

Shigaraki was the only one who didn't look convinced.

“Isn't it possible he just fell asleep?”

Yanagawa answered immediately.

“Can't be. I was bored out my skull, so I kept on starin' at the door, an' Tara didn't step away from it once. So I could see that mangy mutt clearly... an' he didn't ever hold still for long.”

She wasn't the only one who'd seen. Saijou nodded.

“I watched him almost all night, too, but he never left the door and never looked like he was sleeping.”

Yuki had also passed the time watching Tara, and he felt the same way. He summarized their situation.

“Since so many people were all watching him, I think it's safe to say that Tara kept watch by the door all night.”

At the same time, Tara himself had been given a perfect alibi for Kikyo's murder.

“...But doesn't that mean this is an impossible crime?”

Mikumo whispered with a troubled expression. Yuki gave a slight nod in response.

“Unfortunately, it is. For now... let's go over how many times each of us left to use the bathroom after Producer Kikyo entered the small room. Those were the only times anyone was alone, so we might be able to deduce something.”

As everyone went over their memories, they recalled everyone's actions from last night to that morning as follows:

 

 
Kikyo: 10:20 P.M. (5 minutes)

Ryuuzen: 11:00 P.M. (5 minutes), 3:20 A.M. (5 minutes)

Mikumo: 10:30 P.M. (Slightly over 5 minutes), 12:50 A.M. (slightly over 5 minutes), 4:40 A.M. (slightly over 5 minutes)

Saijou: 11:20 P.M. (10 minutes), 3:50 A.M. (10 minutes)

Yanagawa: 10:50 P.M. (slightly over 5 minutes), 2:30 A.M. (slightly over 5 minutes)

Motegi: Never acted alone

Shigaraki: 11:40 P.M. (5 minutes), 2:05 A.M. (15 minutes)

 

(All times approximated)



Unlike the previous cases, this time Motegi had never been alone. Every time he'd gone to the bathroom, Yuki had accompanied him.

Seeing that, Yanagawa gave a deep sigh.

“So it looks like Doc Motegi ain't our man after all. The Visitor never had any chance to grab Ryuuzen or Saijou, so... the suspects are me, Ms. Mikumo, an' Shigaraki.”

If it was just a matter of stabbing Kikyo in his sleep, destroying the recording device, and pouring wine over it, it would be possible to do within five minutes. If they killed Kikyo first and then destroyed the equipment on a second trip, it would be even easier.

...But even with all the information they'd gathered, they hadn't really made much progress.

The biggest problem in the case was “how did the Visitor get into Kikyo's room?” The list didn't appear to contain any clues to that mystery.

Motegi, who was sitting on a bath towel, spoke up.

“It is as I suspected, the Visitor has fooled us all. By using a trick born of its unique properties and special abilities, or in other words, the special rules of this mystery... The second stage of the Mystery of the Ambush is at last drawing to a close.”

Was his fever back? His face was red, and he sounded like he was half asleep. However, behind the words they so desperately wanted to write off as nonsense... lurked an indescribable terror.

There were barely seven hours until the boat arrived.

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