Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1 COMPLETE

DANGANRONPA KIRIGIRI VOLUME 1
PDF by SeriousSeiko of DredicsGameSurgery

Translation by Kamase Megane and “kanan is love”
Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1
Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1, part 1
It felt like I had cried a lot while I was sleeping. What was it again that I was crying about? Did
something sad happen? Or did I have that dream again?
I didn't really know the reason why. But my cheeks were completely drenched with tears. When
I tried to wipe them, I got the strange feeling that something was off.
My right hand couldn't reach my face. My wrist hurt. And so, springboarding off of these
facts, I became dimly aware.
Still groggy, I slowly lifted my head to look at my right wrist. I was wearing an unfamiliar bracelet.
A sturdy-looking bracelet, with a black luster. And just in case I was still inclined to call it cute
and fashionable, there was a chain attached to it that made that rather difficult.
This really isn't the kind of thing I'm into.
The chain was the biggest problem. When I tried to move my right arm, the chain went taut and
prevented me from doing so. My right arm was restricted and incapable of reaching my head. I
followed the chain with my eyes, and saw another one of the bracelets attached to the leg of the
bed.
In my hazy state of consciousness, I finally started to realize the position I was in. I wasn't on
top of the bed, but lying face down on the floor. I guess somehow my right wrist got handcuffed
to the leg of the bed, so I couldn't move from that spot. It appeared that my right arm was the
only thing restrained, so I could move the rest of my body freely.
I crawled closer to the bed until I could move my right arm as freely as possible, and put both
hands on the floor to push myself up gingerly into a sitting position. I felt dizzy.
What exactly had happened here? Why had I collapsed in a place like this?
I tried to remember, but my memory was obscured by meaningless noise. I tried adjusting my
mental frequency, searching for recent memories.
The first thing I remembered was that abominable sign. I briefly flashed back to the letters that
were written on it.
"Welcome to the Picturesque Sirius Observatory".

Looking at that sign in the dim dusk light, I'd seen the result of someone's prank, where they'd
crossed out the beginning of the word "picturesque" with red spraypaint, writing "despair"
instead.
"Welcome to the Despairesque Sirius Observatory".
Oh, right, this building was called the Sirius Observatory. It was a privately owned astronomical
observatory, and the building itself apparently had a distinctive star shape. Each of the five
points of the star was a guest room shaped like a glass-paneled isosceles triangle. The center,
a regular pentagon, was a hall with a domed ceiling, where once upon a time you could also
supposedly observe the galaxy.
I had apparently collapsed in one of the guest rooms. Gradually my memory became more
distinct.
It's okay, I can remember.
My name is... Yui Samidare, age 16. I'm a detective.

By the request of a prominent figure, we five detectives had been gathered here at the Sirius
Observatory. A detective lives for requests like this one. All the more so if they're requests that
imply hidden secrets; we can't avert our eyes from the allure.
But the person who made the request never showed up.
At this point it was already a little past suspicion. We were tricked. Someone was plotting out a
crime when they gathered us here, and that's how I ended up in this mess.
Now that the situation was clear, dread began to settle in. I didn't know who was responsible for
this, but these strange circumstances had stolen my freedom from me completely. More than
anything, the fact that I was toyed with while I was unconscious gave me goosebumps. I
wondered if they did anything weird to me. For the time being, my only solace was that I had no
pain or external injuries.
Putting my glasses back on properly from where they had been lying askew, I took a look
around the room.
My backpack was sitting on top of the bed. That probably means this is my room. The curtains
on the window were drawn. I couldn't see outside, but I could tell that it definitely wasn't light out
there. Maybe it was nighttime, or maybe it was because of the snow...
A telescope was set up in the room. That wasn't something I had brought there, but something
that had been there originally. But I remembered that I hadn't been able to look at the stars in
the sky because of all the snow that had been falling.
I suddenly turned to look over my shoulder. The door to the room was closed, so I couldn't see
the state of the pentagonal hall.
It's too quiet... What about everyone else? Why isn't anyone kicking up a fuss about this?
Maybe everyone else was restrained like me, and they can't move either. Or maybe they're still
unconscious.
I didn't know who was doing this and what they were planning, but I couldn't let them keep doing
as they pleased. I had to stand up to them. I was a detective, after all.
First of all, I had to do something about those handcuffs. I couldn't stand up as long as I was
tied to the leg of the bed. There was a keyhole at the base of the chain, but I couldn't find the
key.
I probably can't just drag the bed along with me...

Hm?
The bed's legs were four columns, one on each of the four corners. The handcuffs were
attached to one of them. But like this... When I really thought about it, I realized that if I could
just lift up the bed, I could slip the handcuffs out from under the leg. It was a regular wooden
bed that couldn't be more than a twin size. It was pretty safe to say it was within my power.
I grabbed the leg of the bed and lifted it up right away. Even for someone like me, who didn't
have much arm strength, I was able to lift it just barely. That was enough. I only needed to make
a gap large enough to slip the handcuffs free from the bed leg.
On the count of three, I gathered my strength and lifted the leg of the bed a few more
centimeters. I removed the handcuffs through that gap.
All right! Regaining my freedom was actually pretty easy!
I wondered if the person who got me in this mess thought that a girl wouldn't be strong enough
to lift the bed. If that's the case, I have to give thanks for their negligence.
Finally, I was able to get to my feet. I felt a little lightheaded, but it was fine. I did some light
stretches to loosen up my body. No problem. I've got this.
Handcuffs dangling from my right arm, I softly opened the door and peered into the central
pentagonal hall. No one was there. I prudently confirmed the status of my surroundings as I
went out into the hall.
A short, round wooden table was placed in the middle of the hall. Apparently, there used to be a
round, iron pedestal there with a gigantic telescope, but it had been removed a long time ago.
Now all there was to see was empty space.
The hall was quiet, with no one to be seen. A glance at the analog clock on the wall told me it
was past twelve o'clock. Judging from how dark it had been outside, it was probably midnight,
right after the date had rolled over.
Where did everyone go? I considered calling out, but I abandoned that idea.
What's that...?
As I was moving around the table, I saw two young legs poking out. Black loafers and black
knee-high socks. At that moment, I understood who they belonged to. One of the other
detectives who had accompanied me—
Kyouko Kirigiri.
She was splayed across the floor with her legs out. It looked like she had somehow collapsed
face down. She didn't show any signs of movement.
I went around the table and drew closer, my gaze running up her legs. They were very frail legs.
The slender curves running from her calves to her pale thighs told of her girlish physical
immaturity. The pristine pleats of her skirt were intact, fanning out from her hips onto the floor.
Is she okay...?
Just as I was about to move closer to her, my feet stopped on their own. Her head was lying on
its right side, as if turning to face me directly. Her braid was draped across her cheek,
concealing her small mouth. Her eyes were closed. Her skin looked cold, without any sense of
body heat, and although that wasn't much different from how she looked when I first met her,
now it looked even more conspicuous.
She's not... dead, is she?
No—her small back was moving up and down, just slightly.
Is she just unconscious?
I couldn't tell from far away, but I hesitated to get closer to her to confirm her life status.
Because a giant, bloodstained pair of shears had been dropped right next to her right
hand.
Were they pruning shears, maybe? They were the type that needed two hands to operate. The
sturdy blades looked like they could cut through any branch, no matter how thick. Usually they
would be used to prune trees or shrubs, but when you think about what they would have had to
cut in order to get bloodstains all over them—
At first I thought it might have been her blood, but I couldn't see any injuries on her. I couldn't
see any traces of blood on her clothes or on the floor, either.
Then whose blood was on the shears? Judging by the fact that they were dropped by her hand,
was she actually the one who used them as a weapon? My fear of the situation made me
hesitate to move closer.
What in the world had happened to Kyouko Kirigiri? And whose blood could that possibly be? I
had to find out!

For the time being, I left her behind, and moved across the hall. I went for the closest guest
room. The door was slightly open. I slowly opened it further.
The lights were on in the room. The curtains were drawn, so I still couldn't see what was going
on outside. There was a person-shaped lump in the blankets on the bed. Someone's sleeping.
Probably one of the other detectives. From what I could see from the doorway, it looked like
they were sleeping very peacefully.
—Without taking a single breath.
I hesitantly walked closer to the bed and peered over it. There was a man there, looking up at
the ceiling with his mouth slightly agape. I was pretty sure he had said his name was Eigo
Amino. He was a practicing detective in his mid-thirties. He showed no signs of noticing me,
eyes cracked open and deeply asleep.
"Um... Sorry for bothering you while you're trying to sleep," I tried calling out to him. There was
no response. I could tell that it wouldn't do any good no matter how many times I tried calling out
to him. Somehow, even back when I had just entered the room, the scent of despair had already
wafted my way.
He was unmoving, eyes open.
I frantically suppressed the desire to scream, slowly extending my hand to grab the blanket and
carefully pull it off...
That's when his head turned towards me.
My hair stood on end, and I jumped away. His head rolled towards the side of the bed, stopping
when the tip of his nose pressed into the mattress. Generally you wouldn't be able to turn your
neck that far without changing the rest of your posture, but there was no sign of anything
moving below the neck. Instead, it was just his head in a blatantly strange position. Once I
removed the blanket, the reason was abundantly clear.
His neck had been severed from his body, decapitating him.
Underneath the blanket, there was blood all over, practically searing my retinas with the bright
red color. I averted my eyes as if trying to let the color drain from my vision, backing away
immediately.
My body started shaking of its own will. I felt suddenly cold. Was there a drop in the
temperature? Or was it because I'd laid eyes upon a repulsive corpse? It was so cold, and yet I
became covered head to toe in an unpleasant sweat.
I staggered towards the next guest room. Just like the last room, the door was slightly open. I
could see inside the room a little through the crack. It seemed like, again, another detective was
on the bed, under the blanket.
I didn't want to look. I didn't want to know anything. But I had to look, and I had to know. If I was
going to call myself a detective, even for just a moment, I had to face reality. No matter what
kind of tragedy or despair was awaiting me—
I entered the room and went up to the bed. It didn't look like there was any evidence of the room
having been broken into. On the contrary, you could even say that the man's sleeping form
seemed perfectly undisturbed, and classically beautiful.
He was wearing light grey sunglasses, but they weren't trying to conceal the shadow of death
upon his face. Shiita Enbi. He's a detective in his prime. No—he WAS a detective.
When I tried removing the blanket, I saw that his neck was also cut through. But that wasn't all. I
noticed something else strange. The head that was lying face-up on the pillow definitely
belonged to the man called Enbi, but below the neck, the body looked like it belonged to
someone else. I was pretty sure that Enbi had had a strong, muscular build. But the body lying
underneath the blanket belonged to a stout, heavy-set middle-aged man.
I remembered that build. It belonged to another one of the detectives who had accompanied us:
a man called Kou Inuzuka.
Wh-What does this mean?
This was just strange from start to finish. I had more information than I'd ever asked for swirling
around in my tiny head.
I leapt out of the room, moving towards the next guest room. I had a feeling I knew what would
be in there. And, as expected, Kou Inuzuka's corpse was on the bed.
But the question was whether it could really be called Inuzuka's corpse. Since, also as
expected, it seemed like the body belonged to someone else. It didn't seem like Enbi's, either.
So does that mean that it belongs to Amino, the first one I found...?
ither the heads or the bodies were swapped around in a circle.

I see, so e
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to warm up my freezing body, and went back out into
the hall, dejected.
Everything was all messed up. Why was something like this happening? At some point, of the
five of us who had visited the Sirius Observatory, three had died. Not only that, but their heads
had been severed, and then for some reason the bodies had been switched around from the
heads and left that way.
There wasn't anyone else other than us at Sirius Observatory. On top of that, we'd been visited
by snowstorms both before and after we'd arrived, so the building was currently isolated by the
snow. It was safe to assume that this wasn't the intervention of an outsider.
Eigo Amino. Shiita Enbi. Kou Inuzuka. Yui Samidare. Kyouko Kirigiri.
Of these five, three had been killed, and two were still alive.
Naturally, I could safely assert that I hadn't killed them. There were parts of my memory that
were still fuzzy, but frankly, it was ludicrous to think that I could kill three people and yet have no
sense of it at all afterwards. And why would I handcuff myself in the first place? There was no
doubt that someone else had been the one to restrain me. It's possible that whoever did that
was planning on killing me next.
So who was that person?
Going by process of elimination, I could only think of the culprit as the other survivor.
She couldn't have—
I returned to where she was. Kyouko Kirigiri was still lying on the floor of the hall. Her head was
still firmly connected to the rest of her body. There was no doubt that it would have been much
easier to cut through her slender neck, as opposed to those of the other men. But she hadn't
received any damage. And the very weapon that seemed perfectly suited to the crime had fallen
by her hand...
If you asked me, just from looking at her, I wouldn't say she was anything but a pure and
innocent girl. Could I really say that she went around chopping three men's heads off? That
would be stupid... but...
I stepped back to observe her from a distance. She was a cute girl, but her features left me with
the impression of enigmatic mystery. Talking with her, too, had demonstrated that she was
wary, and concealed her true thoughts. Though maybe that was related to whatever reason she
had for being a detective at such a young age.
As I was pondering what reason that might be, I suddenly saw something glinting in her left
hand. ...A key? I had a flash of intuition. The key to the handcuffs!
If it could be said that "the person who murdered the three detectives" equalled "the person who
restrained me with the handcuffs", then wouldn't the key in her hand serve as proof that she was
the killer? If the key really was the key to the handcuffs...
I needed to make sure. And I wanted to get those handcuffs off of my right arm as soon as
possible, anyway.
I approached her, softly extending my hand, trying to go unnoticed. If I wanted to steal the key, I
first had to extract it from her grip. Her fingers looked almost like small white flower buds closing
over it. One by one, I gently spread those fingers out. I discreetly removed the key, and then
backed away from her. She still hadn't noticed me.
Immediately, I thrust the key into the keyhole by my wrist. It fit perfectly. I turned the key, and it
opened the handcuffs.
The rush of freedom that I felt was joined by a simultaneous flood of despair. Is she really the
culprit? I didn't know what had happened to her, but maybe she'd killed those men, and then
restrained me, and then lost consciousness and collapsed? Maybe she'd hit her limit for
physical exertion, or maybe it was anemia.
Testing one more time to see if the key was the real deal, I stuck it in the other keyhole and tried
turning it. Just as I thought, the handcuff opened with a click.
At that moment, Kirigiri stirred slightly at my feet, as if in response to the noise from the
handcuffs. She's waking up!
I immediately took half a step back. She opened her eyes while still on her side, staring down at
the floor. At last, she shifted to sit up, rubbing her eyes, and looked up at me with a look of
astonishment on her face. She was dazed and defenseless, sitting on the ground with her legs
out to the side.
And then, she abruptly noticed the shears on the floor. All at once, her innocent expression
froze over. She reached out her right hand to pick them up.
"Don't move!" I ordered her to stay still. But her hand didn't look like it was going to stop moving
any time soon.
There was no other choice. I kicked off the floor to quickly jump towards her, locking her left
wrist in the handcuffs. Then I tugged at the chain forcefully, attaching the other end of the
handcuffs to the column of the nearby armchair's arm rest.
She was tied to the chair. It was only a one-person armchair, but her arms were so skinny, it
didn't seem like she would be able to drag it along with her. Her right hand couldn't reach the
shears anymore. She stopped trying, looking up at me, expressionless. But I could tell that her
eyes were hiding just a tiny bit of aggravation.
"Why are you doing this, Onee-sama?" Kirigiri asked calmly, without raising her voice.
Onee-sama—so she said, but her eyes didn't show even the slightest bit of deference. Well, that
was only to be expected. I'd just been tolerating her calling me that in the first place. Even
though, when she said it with such an innocent face, I could mistake her for my real little sister...
I shook my head, as if shaking off my sudden burst of sentimentality.
"What do you mean, why? That's my line." I kicked the shears across the floor, further away
from her. "I thought maybe I'd finally made a good friend. But you killed all three of them?"
"All three of them...? Killed...?" Her eyes went wide for a moment, before she looked down
pensively. "I see... So I was too late..." She hung her head, still sitting on the floor. Somehow,
she looked really downhearted.
"Don't play dumb. Why did you kill them? What were you planning to do to me?"
"Calm down. I am not the culprit."
"You're not the culprit...? Who else is gonna be the culprit?! Three out of five of us were killed,
and you and I are the only ones left. If I'm not the culprit, then you must be!"
"Where is the proof that you are not the culprit, Yui-oneesama?"
"Proof? You've got a witness standing right here!" I pointed at myself. "I was passed out
unconscious until just a little while ago. When I came to, three people were dead. I'm as certain
that I didn't kill them as I am that I'm a sixteen-year-old high school student, and that I'm as
virginal as Virgo!"
"In that case, I also plead innocence, calling myself as a witness."
"Nuh-uh, that's not gonna work for you! You're the one who had the shears that are probably the
murder weapon, and you had the key for the handcuffs that were on my arm. The evidence is
stacked up against you. How are you gonna refute that argument?" I crossed my arms, looking
down at her. She stretched out her legs, sitting up with her back to the side of the armchair,
shifting to look up at me. I'm clearly superior both in terms of physical position AND morality,
here.
"I only just laid eyes on the shears. I have absolutely no recollection of any key to any
handcuffs..."
"You were holding it in your hand."
"Someone made me hold it." Kirigiri shook her head slowly. "It seems that while I was
unconscious, someone set me up."
"Someone like...?"
"Who knows who it was? Perhaps it was one of the detectives who accompanied us here, or
perhaps it was you, Yui-oneesama."
"I'm telling you it's not me! I'm a victim!"
"If you were to ask me, I would say that your suddenly attacking me makes you the more likely
culprit." She raised her left hand, showing off the handcuffs.
"That wasn't attacking you. I had to do it out of self-defense. Because you were trying to pick up
the shears, right?"
"If you see a bloodstained set of shears on the ground, isn't it natural to want to pick it up and
examine it?"
"That's not natural! I would never do that!"
"Even though you're a detective?" she asked, tilting her head and turning her eyes up towards
me.
I bit my lip, at a loss for how to respond. "Mmmmph..."
"People have been killed, haven't they? If that's the case, then that's all the more reason to
examine the weapon. Does the shape of the weapon match the wounds on the victims? Is
anyone able to use this weapon, or are there limitations? Are there any notable peculiarities
about it? How heavy is it? How long is it? The list goes on..."
"I know all that," I cut in, obstinate. "But you shouldn't go touching them with your bare hands,
Little Miss Detective. You're gonna leave extra fingerprints on them, aren't you?"
"...Yes, that was careless of me. I was still a little drowsy at the time. I'm sorry," she apologized
obediently.
"Or maybe those shears are already covered in your fingerprints. You were thinking you could
trick me by touching them now."
"Perhaps you could take it that way." She narrowed her eyes, looking down at the shears. "Are
you absolutely sure that these shears are the murder weapon?"
"Probably. It looks like they'd be good for quick decapitation."
"Decapitation...?"
"Right, the three of them had their heads separated from their bodies... Wait, you're the one who
did it. I bet even with your scrawny arms, you could still do a number on someone's neck with
sturdy pruning shears like those."
There was a momentary silence, where she showed no reaction to my words. I thought maybe
she would feel a little down when I suspected her, and maybe she would show a little grief in her
expression, but she looked as unruffled as ever. In fact—
"It seems as if something very inexplicable has occurred." She looked flawlessly sparkling, with
such clarity in her eyes that you might call it innocence.
"Yeah, I almost can't comprehend it," I shot back. "To think a girl like you would be a twisted
murderer..."
"I hate to repeat myself, but I am not the culprit. Do you still not understand, Yui-oneesama?"
"Then who is the culprit? Everyone else is dead. There's no way they're just faking it. They were
all decapitated. Are you just trying to say that you still think I'm the culprit?"
"No," she replied without hesitation. "Despite what I said earlier, I don't think you're the culprit."
That was a surprise. In a situation like this, she shouldn't have had any valid counterargument
besides naming me as the culprit. Or does she have some ulterior motive behind excluding me
from the pool of suspects?
"Why would you think that?"
"Remember what happened right before we fell unconscious. I believe the time was around 8
o'clock. All of us were gathered here in the hall, discussing what should be done about dinner."
She was right…

We had been puzzled by the fake request we'd received. It was dark outside, and we weren't
able to go home during the snowstorm. We had gathered around the table to discuss our plans
from there on out.
Just then, with no warning, the first person collapsed. I'm pretty sure it was Amino. He suddenly
crumpled up, falling from his feet onto his side. Then, white smoke started spewing out of
nowhere. Someone screamed, "Fire!" But there weren't any other signs of a fire, and it didn't
feel hot. I had been nervously trying to figure out what to do, but before I knew it, I also started
to lose consciousness. I had no idea what happened after that.
"That's the truth behind the smoke." Kirigiri pointed underneath the table. A small aluminum
can-type thing had rolled under there.
"What is this?" I crawled under the table, pulling it out from under there. "It looks like a can of
juice... but there's no hole to drink from."
"It's a home-made smoke generator, isn't it? Someone rolled it under the table. We can feel
fortunate that it doesn't seem to have been tear gas or sleeping gas. But that hideous white
smoke blanketed our fields of vision entirely."
I had lost consciousness pretty quickly, so I didn't really know what had happened after that.
"What exactly happened?"
"Well, I don't really know. But everyone started collapsing, one after the other, and so I
immediately pretended to collapse too," Kirigiri said.
"Pretended? What do you mean, pretended? Are you saying you're the only one that nothing
happened to?"
"Yes. Because the smoke itself was harmless. I believe that everyone collapsed not because of
the white smoke, but due to some other cause. It is a fact that the first person collapsed before
the smoke came out. I wonder if perhaps, at some point, you were made to ingest a soporific.
Do you have any recollection of that?"
"Hmmmm... Soporific?"
I didn't know about the others, but at the very least, I could speak for myself in saying that I
hadn't ingested anything since arriving at the Sirius Observatory. There shouldn't have been any
point at which I could have taken any drugs. But thinking back, right before I lost consciousness,
I did feel sort of drunk. I thought I just wasn't feeling well, but...
"Still, what's up with you being the only person who escaped danger?"
"Perhaps it's thanks to my constant training," she said bluntly. "Sensing danger is my specialty.
But, when I do sense it, it's often nothing more than a simple 'bad feeling' or 'foreboding', and so
frequently it's only in looking back on events that I am able to string together a logical
explanation of events... Grandfather calls it 'hearing the reaper's footsteps'."
I hear that great mathematicians are able to come up with propositions even when they skip
some calculations along the way. I've heard of a lot of episodes where they struggle to explain
themselves afterwards. I wondered if she was that kind of genius.
No, right now, we don't really know why we fell unconscious, so it's possible she's just being
silly. Or maybe she's the culprit, and so obviously she'd be able to avert danger...
Wait, what "training"...?
"Everyone started collapsing one after the other, so it was clear that some dreadful criminal plot
was being put in motion," Kirigiri continued. "I pretended to collapse to see what the culprit
planned on doing. But when I did, I heard the reaper's footsteps again."
"What happened?"
"They were the culprit's footsteps. It seems our culprit is the very cautious type. They came
closer to me, and forced some strange drug on me. It wasn't chloroform or ether. It likely wasn't
an anesthetic... Perhaps it was some sort of synthetic narcotic. They covered my mouth with a
handkerchief, and though I held my breath for a bit so as not to inhale it, at some point I still lost
consciousness..."
So in the end, she just fainted too? Mm, wait a minute?
Shears, decapitated corpses, drugs that cause fainting... Those things together had a familiar
ring to them. No... I recognized that combination.
There's... no way that could be it.
For now, I just need to hear out all that Kirigiri has to say. I might just be misunderstanding
things.
"Did the culprit know that you were only pretending to faint?"
"No, I don't think they did. They were likely going around and putting the handkerchief up to
everyone. To ensure that they actually fainted."
"And then what?"

"Despite my hazy consciousness, I still attempted to resist." In the middle of her disinterested
speech, this is the only place where she seemed to deliberately insert a pause. Almost as if she
were proudly announcing her results.
"...So?"
rabbed the culprit's hand."

"I g
"Grabbed?" I asked, disappointed. "Is that all?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, I was unable to scratch or bite the culprit, but I was at least able to touch
their hand. With the white smoke clouding my vision, that sensation has become my only clue
as to the identity of the culprit," Kirigiri said, looking down at her own fingertips.
"What did it feel like?"
"It was a man's hand."
"Really? Are you sure about that?"
"It was unremarkable, but unmistakably male. There's nowhere easier to sense the difference
between men and women than the hands and fingertips."
"Hmmmm... Is that really true in practice, though? Have you ever held a man's hand before?"
She looked taken aback by my question, freezing in place. There was a long pause—and then,
she just resumed her explanation, acting as if nothing had happened. "I have never murdered
anyone, but I have read up on the sensations of murdering someone. This is a similar situation.
You understand, don't you? Then, continuing on..."
"Wait, that's some pretty strange reasoning. Oh, maybe, you haven't even held hands with any
boy at all, ever...?" I asked, teasing, effectively shutting her up again. She was pretty mad this
time. She turned her head to look away, apparently shunning the conversation.
Maybe I teased her a little too much. Even though she spoke and acted like she was indifferent,
this reaction was surprisingly timid, so all of a sudden I didn't feel like teasing her anymore.
"Sorry, sorry, that was a weird place for me to butt in," I apologized. "I'm sure you've at least
held your dad's hand before. That's enough for your logic, so everything's fine. Now, go on."
"I forgot about that."
"Huh?"
"I'm saying I forgot what my father's hand feels like." Kirigiri narrowed her eyes, brushing back
her bangs with her right hand. That was the most emotional gesture I'd ever seen from her up
until that point.
"I-I see. Gotcha," I said, brushing it off. How complicated. It seemed like she had her own
tangled circumstances, but getting too stuck on them would mean the real conversation would
never progress. "So basically, what you're trying to say is... since the person who caused you to
faint was a man, then logically it can be concluded that I, Yui Samidare, am not the culprit,
correct?"
Kirigiri nodded, still turned away.
Among the detectives that were invited to the Sirius Observatory, Kyouko Kirigiri and myself
were the only women. If her assertion was correct, then I could be excluded from the list of
suspects.
"But that's what I've been saying since the beginning," I said, sighing. "The fact that I'm not the
culprit is a fact that I already knew. I didn't even need proof for that."
"No, I still wouldn't call it definitive proof."
"What? Are you saying you can't believe it unless you touch my hand to make sure or
something?" I asked, but Kirigiri just faced down, searching for the words to say, before looking
up with only her eyes, nodding just slightly.
"...Your hand," she said hesitantly, asking for my right hand. She seemed pretty serious.
Is this a trap?
If she was the culprit, then maybe all the testimony she'd just given was nothing but an excuse
to get closer to me. Maybe she was hiding some kind of weapon, and was trying to lure me in
range.
Kyouko Kirigiri—I still didn't know much about her. I hadn't really had the time to get to know
her, and in the time that we did spend together, I mostly learned that she was mysterious, and
that she apparently had a complicated home life. Her claiming that I was innocent wasn't going
to be enough to get me to trust her.
"Okay, let's shake hands and make up." I still didn't move closer to her, though. "But the real
handshake will be after everything is settled, and we're both proven innocent."
"I wonder what that's supposed to mean?"

"First, sit on the chair," I ordered. She had been sitting next to the chair this whole time, but in
accordance with my demand, she sat down in the armchair. "Now, show me your right hand."
She presented her hand just like I told her to.
I carefully drew closer to her, taking her small hand in mine. It seemed as if it were made of
glass, as if putting a little strength into it would shatter it, but I steadfastly refused to let go. Her
left hand was restrained by the handcuffs. With me holding her right hand like this, she
wouldn't be able to attack me.
We shook hands, as if evaluating each other, exchanging a glance.
"So? Do you see the truth now? But we can talk about that later. I'm a detective too, so I'm
going to try searching for my own truth."
"What will you do?"
"First, I need to conduct a thorough search of the building," I said, still holding hands with her. "I
still suspect you. You're a detective too, so you should understand where I'm coming from,
right? But if I want to keep suspecting you... There's one major condition I still need to fulfill
before I can indict you as the culprit. That is, I have to investigate the possibility of a crime
committed from the outside. Was someone other than us five guests able to come or go
from this place?"
"You still hadn't confirmed that either way?"
"...Y-Yeah, I mean, I was still half-asleep," I scrambled to defend myself after she butted in. "A
crime committed by a sixth, uninvited guest... If there's any proof of that, I can let you go."
"You'll need to investigate quickly, before the snow erases the evidence. Particularly outside the
windows and the entrance. There may still be traces of someone exiting or entering."
"I'll look into it."
"If an uninvited guest is in fact present, there is no doubt that that person is a man. And he may
still be hiding in the building." Kirigiri looked a little worried.
"Yeah, I'm gonna check to see. By myself. Sorry, but I'm gonna have you stay like that for a
while. And, I'm gonna bind your right hand too." If she was the culprit, then she had to have
been the one who prepared the handcuffs, too. If that was the case, there was a chance she
had a spare key hidden somewhere. If I left her unattended, she might unlock the handcuffs. So
I needed to restrict the use of both of her hands. "No offense."
"None taken. Actually, I'd be more concerned if you weren't the sort of person who would think
of that," Kirigiri said with a cold expression.
But... even if I wanted to restrain her, I didn't have any extra handcuffs, or rope, or anything to
tie her hands with.
"Use my ribbon."
"...Is that okay?"
"If it's used to prove my innocence."
I nodded, and loosened one of the ribbons tied around her pigtailed braids. I used the ribbon to
tie her right hand to the arm of the chair. And with that, both of her hands were secured to the
armchair.
"I'm going to go around and investigate each of the rooms one by one. If our unwanted guest is
around somewhere, he might try to move between rooms and hide himself somewhere else so
that I don't see him. But if you're here in the central hall, you should see right through him."
"So I'm serving as surveillance?"
"You got it. But our guest could be super dangerous for you, with both of your hands tied up like
that. I mean, he's a filthy murderer, after all. If he shows up, just scream at the top of your lungs.
I'll come rescue you in a flash."
"You'll rescue me?"
"The existence of an unwanted guest would prove your innocence. I'd protect you with all I've
got."
"I see... But I believe it will already be too late at that point." As always, Kirigiri acted like this
had nothing to do with her. "But, if you would allow me to say so, I don't think you can logically
conclude that I'm innocent simply because an uninvited guest might be present. That person's
reason for hiding would not necessarily be related to the murders; for example..."
"That doesn't matter! Geez!" I interrupted. "In a situation like this, if someone's here sneaking
around, it's just common sense for me to kick their butt instead of doing anything else!"
"...I suppose," she responded meekly.

"I really doubt someone's coming in and out of this building out in the middle of a snowstorm in
the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night... But whatever. I'm investigating."
I left Kirigiri behind, and went to investigate the closest room first. I opened the curtains,
checked the locks on the windows, and investigated the state of the snow outside.
It didn't take long for me to go around and check the windows in all of the rooms. The
conclusion was that all of the windows were locked from the inside. There wasn't anything amiss
with the snow near them.
None of the guest rooms had any air conditioning vents or anything that would lead out except
for the three windows. So, following that train of thought, it was impossible for anyone to make it
out with the windows locked.
Next, I investigated the entranceway. The front door was locked, and even when I checked the
snow outside, I didn't see any signs of anyone entering or exiting through it.
In the end, I couldn't find any evidence of anyone going in or out of the building. And I didn't
sufficiently detect the presence of the hypothetical unwanted guest, either—which is to say,
anyone other than me and Kirigiri who was alive.
Kirigiri was waiting for me in the hall, still restrained on the chair.
"Unfortunately, it looks like there's no one here except you and me after all."
"There wasn't any sign of anything in the snow outside?"
"Nah, I mean, in a storm like this, traces of anything would probably be wiped away by the snow
really quick, but if a person was walking through that, there would definitely be a dent in it at
least. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary like that."
And so, the murder mystery became even more baffling.
No, you could say it makes it a lot more simple.
You could compare Sirius Observatory to an airtight bottle. As long as the bottle remains
airtight, there won't ever be any more or less inside of it. So if there are three corpses and two
survivors, one of the survivors has to be the culprit. Therefore, Kyouko Kirigiri is the culprit.
The person in question looked up at me expectantly. It was too bad, but I couldn't release her
from her restraints just yet.
If my reasoning was correct, then there was no doubt that she was the culprit. But it was also
true that I couldn't come to terms with that answer. Would it really be possible for a girl like her
to kill three grown men and arrange their corpses on the beds?
"I don't know what's going on anymore... What is with this case?" I complained unthinkingly.
"This weird building is one thing, and the weird request we got is another... But now, finally, I at
least understand one thing. T he incident described in that black letter wasn't an incident
that we were requested to solve, but an incident that we were getting involved in
ourselves."
"...Yui-oneesama," Kirigiri interrupted. "What are you talking about?"
"Huh? The written request. There was a black letter with it, right? And it had the place, the
weapon, and all that other stuff written in it."
"...Show me the black letter you're talking about."
"If you want?"
I left Kirigiri sitting on the chair, going back to my room and digging through my backpack. I
pulled the black letter out, and returned to the hall.
"Unfold it and show me."
I unthinkingly complied with her tense and urgent request. I took out the folded black washi
writing paper from inside the black envelope. The contents of the letter were written on it in
white brushstrokes.
Kirigiri looked at those brushstrokes, and then it seemed as if her body temperature dropped
significantly, her face growing pale. "Yui-oneesama... This is no ordinary murder case."
"What? What do you mean?"
"This is most likely... a game."

Chapter 2: Duel Noir 1, part 1
He dreamed of being burned in a furious blaze.
When he woke up, the sweat from his brow had traveled down to dampen his cheeks. Or maybe
those were tears? He wiped them off casually with his right hand.
He was in a hospital waiting room. Nurses came and went to quiet instrumental music, the scent
of disinfectant sprinkling behind them. The electronic display would never show his number.
"It seems it's going to take about an hour," an old man said from the seat next to him.
But he just gave a standard response and let himself ignore it. If he engaged, the old man was
never gonna shut up. He looked away, pretending to fiddle with his cellphone.
"Rehabilitation, is it? That has to be tough," the old man said anyway.
"Nah, today my legs hurt, so I'm getting some meds..." he mumbled while looking down at his
phone screen, clearly indicating that he didn't want to participate in the conversation.
"The cost of medication is nothing to sneeze at either, is it? And the government's assistance
doesn't amount to much. You're not being compensated nearly enough for the injuries you've
had to live with," the old man said in a kind voice.
He raised his head to look at the old man. The old man wore a felt hat tipped over his eyes, and
an expensive-looking suit. There was an old, long scar that cut across the right side of his
mouth, so that when he smiled, it seemed to warp and twist.
"Who are you?" he responded to the old man in a belligerent tone. "How do you know me? Are
you with the media?"
"I'm a sympathetic stranger." The old man's scar twisted. "Someone with compassion and
empathy for you."
"Oh, so this is about religion? Then go hit someone else up. I'm sick of that shit. You guys just
feed off of the weak."
"No, we have no affiliation to any religion. Nor do we have ties to the media, of course."
"So then what?!" His voice was starting to become increasingly uncontrolled.
"These are the kind of people that we are." The old man held out a jet-black business card.
"Victims' Catharsis Committee...?"
"That's correct. Furthermore, we have no connection to the government, so I'd like for you to
consider us as an independent non-profit organization."
"You really are with some kinda religious thing, aren't you? You say it's group therapy or a care
seminar, and act all kind and caring to get close to people, and then you take outrageous
amounts of money in lecture fees. Too bad, Gramps. You gotta go for the easier ones with that
crap," he spat, moving to get up from his chair and go somewhere else. And then—
"You don't want revenge?"
The old man's murmur reached his ears.
"What did you say?" He stopped without thinking, turning around.
"We have an interest in the depths of your darkness. I see; you do indeed have a deep, dense
darkness living inside of you." The old man touched the brim of his hat, as if adjusting its
position on his head, but his eyes remained covered. "It would be difficult to say you had been
happy, but you once had an ordinary, lackluster life. You didn't bother anyone, worked a
respectable job, and accordingly, you had people who loved you. And then, five years ago,
crime stole everything from your life. Brusquely, unreasonably, completely... What have you
ever done to deserve that? No, you are innocent. At the very least, you never arbitrarily ruined
anyone's life, or anything of the sort."
The old man's voice caused his heart to waver. Strangely enough, it almost sounded like he was
hearing his own voice.
"What we offer is nothing like therapy. Let us leave that, too, to the easier ones. We assist
people with taking back their own lives. We are an organization that can return what was stolen
from you in its entirety."
"Taking back... my own life?"

"You have the right... no, the obligation to do so. For the sake of those who were lost due to that
abominable crime."
The old man's confident tone displayed persuasive power strong enough to brighten even his
soul, that had long ago given up. Just like the old man suggested, he recognized himself as a
"robbed protagonist". The spotlight wasn't shutting off. It certainly wasn't there to illuminate
anyone else, either. It was there to illuminate his own future...
But he smiled bitterly, tossing those delusions to the side. "Ever since then, lots of people have
passed me by. Policemen, prosecutors, defense attorneys, doctors, insurance workers... In the
end, none of them ever saved me. And now I've finally reached the point of getting sympathetic
strangers. Honestly. If I have to pick someone to thank, it'd have to be the doctors. At least they
made it so I can stand on my own in this world again. But that's all I got. I'm nothing but a corpse
that's just barely clinging to life... Any hopes and dreams I had died on that day." He turned his
back on the old man, and left his seat behind.
"I will be waiting in the park outside. If you have an interest in our Catharsis, please do come on
over," the old man's voice came from behind him, as he disappeared into the shop.
Writing off his involvement in the crime as just bad luck would be an understatement.
Five years ago, there was a series of arsons near his house. The security cameras in the area
never caught the culprit on tape, and residents lived in fear of a crime with no criminal.
The arsons continued for days. One night, the fires that had stayed relatively small up until then
grew into something massive. Probably in part because the air was dry that night. The fire
burned down two homes. His family had been living in one of them. Him, his wife, and his
two-year-old son. All three of them were severely burned, but he was the only one who was
saved.
There were many more arson cases continuing after that, but a certain detective paved the way
to solving them all in one fell swoop. The detective called attention to the fact that if you
connected the dots of the arson sites, it made a bizarre star shape. An astrologer in the
divination business lived in the middle of the star.
The detective went to the astrologer's home immediately. But the man had already burned to
death. He had written down some last words that were left next to him: some incomprehensible
thing along the lines of "I set the fires to change the path of the stars". With the conclusion that
the suspect was dead, the case was closed.
When he heard the news, he was thrown into chaos. The sword that he'd been sharpening on
the grindstone of hatred, that he'd planned on someday sticking into the culprit's chest, no
longer had a target. He didn't know who he could throw his anger at anymore. He couldn't turn
to his dead wife or son, either.
Five years had passed since then, and his body at least had seen great improvement. But his
soul was dead. He had lost his job, and was somehow managing on compensation payments
from the state. He didn't even pretend to have anything to live for, thinking this life would
continue on until its conclusion, with no meaning, with the winner in this game of life already
decided...
Until he heard the word "revenge" from that old man just now.
It was a single ray of light in the darkness. No one had ever shown him light like that before.
Well, most likely, no one had even understood the depths of his darkness in the first place.
What he had been searching for was not a way to clear away the darkness, but a signpost to
guide him through the dark abyss.
"I had faith that you would arrive," the old man said, the scar on his mouth twisting.
In the daylight, the park was full of cheerful voices, young mothers pushing strollers, and boys
kicking soccer balls to each other. The old man sitting on a shaded park bench blended into the
scenery well.
"Figured it couldn't hurt to at least hear you out," he said, sitting next to the old man.
"You do have a point there. Unlike attorneys or therapists, we would never demand a fee simply
for having a conversation."
"So who's this 'we'?"
"We are an organization that offers catharsis to those individuals who have had the misfortune
of becoming victimized by crime."
"Enough with the PR crap. What are the facts? Do you send out agents for getting revenge or
something?"
"Hmm, that is a misunderstanding. As I said before, our objective is your catharsis. If you have
your doubts regarding this idea, then I recommend that you reconsider it."
"You really beat around the bush, you old geezer. So what is it that you're gonna do for me?"
"I shall inform you of the true culprit's identity. The one behind the incident that left you in
such a state—"
"Whaaaa? What 'true culprit'?" He couldn't believe what had just come out of the old man's
mouth. He had never even thought about it before. Was the arson not the work of an astrologer
who wasn't quite right in the head? "So who is it?! Who's this true culprit?"
"Wait just one moment," the old man commanded, raising both hands. "I will tell you, but only on
one condition."
Here it is—
He braced himself. Most likely, this "condition" would be a fee or something. "What's the
condition?"
"You must carry out your revenge against the true culprit."
"Revenge—"
"Correct. It is imperative that you exact your revenge and end the life of the true culprit."
"You mean murder them."
"Yes."
A bloody exchange was taking place here in the corner of the peaceful park. There was no one
around to overhear them.
"Gramps, I figure your organization or whatever has done plenty of research on me. So why
even ask? You know I wouldn't turn you down on a condition like that."
"Those are very promising words." The old man bowed his head deeply.
"So hurry up and tell me who the true culprit is."
"Before that, I must make our aim clear to you."
Looks like he's gonna beat around the bush some more.
—But it was true, that he didn't know what reason this mysterious organization had for
instigating revenge.
"Revenge—we call this Catharsis. By which I mean, it is Catharsis for you—it must be carried
out by you yourself, and by no one else. Let us be very clear on this point. Is this acceptable?"
"You're saying I need to kill them with my own hands, right? Of course. That's what I was
planning on doing from the start."
"Then let us continue our conversation. Three things are required for Catharsis. Do you know
what those things are?"
"How would I know? I'm just starting out here, so maybe you could help me out and just tell me."
"Of course. The first is Determination. Regarding this, you say that you have already cleared
this hurdle. Isn't that right?"
"Yeah."
"What is needed next is Money. Accomplishing anything in this world requires money.
Accomplishing something on a grander scale in particular requires substantial capital. How do
you feel regarding this point?"
"Well, sorry, but I can't say I have enough for that."
"Very well; for the sake of your Catharsis, we are willing to make sponsorship arrangements to
take care of the funding. As for the upper limit... there is no particular amount of money that we
would say is too much."
Sponsorship arrangements with no upper limit? Things were starting to smell fishy.
"And then, the third requirement—Techniques. There is a technical aspect to killing someone.
Do you understand? Most, including you, are novices regarding this point. Therefore! We offer
Techniques to kill your target that will not be uncovered by anyone. With these Techniques, you
shall be able to execute the perfect crime."
"That's very generous of you."
"However—" The old man took a significant pause. "These Techniques carry a t oll."
"Whaa?"
"In short, you buy these Techniques from us."

"See, look at you! This just ends up about taking money from the weak after all!" He got to his
feet, apparently fed up. "Pretty elaborate story you had there... But you're just a swindler after
all!"
"Please calm down. As I said before, we are willing to offer unlimited sponsorship. We do not
mind if you purchase these Techniques using this capital."
"...What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that you have no need whatsoever to pay your own way to your Catharsis."
"I don't get it. Then why is there a fee at all, and the whole technique rental?"
"That is the most important aspect to Catharsis. This Catharsis involves risking your life to make
a comeback... It is what it is, and it is a very dramatic event, wouldn't you say? More than any
fiction or documentary."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I am saying that there are those who would enjoy watching your comeback. You enjoy horse
races, don't you? Or perhaps not; the data we have on you said nothing of an interest in
gambling. You may not understand the feelings of those who are very passionate about horse
racing. But in our world, there is no small number of people who watch horses running and
competing for rank and are left with shaky breaths, tossing out exorbitant amounts of money,
moved to tears. In the same way—there are those individuals who have discovered a taste for
watching someone plot revenge and strive to commit the perfect crime."
"Wh... What the hell do you mean by that?"
"In essence... For those individuals of exquisite taste and particular preference in this world,
their choicest entertainment is watching people like you, carrying a darkness such as yours,
making a comeback—your Catharsis."
He was left dumbfounded by the old man's words. He felt as if he'd accidentally taken a step
into a world that he should never have entered. He could more or less understand what the old
man was trying to say, but was that really something that happened...?
"Are you trying to turn my revenge—into a game?"
"Perhaps you could use that word for simplicity's sake." The old man lowered his voice, smiling.
"The finer details are fleshed out by the sponsors... Sponsors foot the bill, and offer up the
finished product... That is how our Catharsis is constructed."
"So you're being backed by a bunch of people with more money and free time than they know
what to do with."
"Do you understand now? But this fact in itself is not indicative of anything except where the
money comes from. Our objective will always be to offer you your Catharsis. Those interests
simply happen to coincide with the interests of our investors. Furthermore, the biggest names in
every business find entertainment in Catharsis. So we obtain special benefits in the financing of
our own business."
Is it true?
Maybe the Catharsis the old man was talking about was just the official front, and the reality was
that it was just turning acts of revenge into show business. But it didn't matter to him either way.
The objective to kill the true culprit was also nothing more than a means to an end. To him, it
was just a challenge on the way to reaching his ultimate goal—getting his life back.
"Are you gonna have cameras following me around 24/7 like some kind of TV documentary?"
"No, no cameraman will be accompanying you. I shall explain the rules regarding that matter
later on."
"Got it. Now, hurry up and tell me the true culprit already."
"I am still not finished with my explanation."
"There's still more?" He raised his voice unthinkingly, disgruntled.
"There is another important point that we have not yet discussed. From here, you shall await
your loan and assume the objective of killing your target, but that alone is an empty pursuit. If,
for example, you were to sneak up on your target from behind as they were walking down the
street at night, and bludgeon them to death with a blunt object... That would certainly be
revenge, but it would not be Catharsis. It emphatically does not qualify as Catharsis."
"What do you mean?"
"Salvation is found in overcoming obstacles. True Catharsis is only found after facing difficult
trials."
"Huh?"
"Let us discuss in more concrete terms." The old man adjusted his position to sit facing him. "As
I said before, you will be purchasing the Techniques that we offer. Allow us to call this choosing
your cards. We possess countless of these cards, all perfectly suited to committing the perfect
crime. For example, there are cards with weapons, cards indicating appropriate locations for
committing a crime, cards with directions for impossible crimes... These cards have costs
determined by their effectiveness and practicality. Then, a Deck is built in advance for the
commencing Catharsis, using the cards you have selected."
"I don't really understand what you're getting at..."
"Let us use a past instance of Catharsis as reference. In that particular case, the person seeking
revenge selected the School location card from us. They also selected the Metal Bat weapon
and, to escape suspicion, the Hidden Room trick."
"Hidden Room? You can even buy that kinda thing?"
"Yes; please consider that there is nothing money cannot buy, so long as someone is willing to
invest the money in you. Incidentally, in this example, the cost of the School was 40 million yen,
the Metal Bat was 3 million yen, and the Hidden Room was 100 million yen, for a total sum of
143 million yen. All prices are calculated in yen."
"Wait a sec, those prices are ridiculous. Why's a Metal Bat cost 3 mil? I could go down to a
sports shop around town and probably get one for less than 10 thousand, right?"
"Please consider that the weapons that we offer are worth no less than advertised. Now, listen,
if you did go down to the sports shop to buy a weapon, you would be instantly leaving tracks
behind. The mass-produced model, the model number, the store, and then, the store's security
cameras... Every bit of information would have your name written on it in invisible ink, waiting to
be revealed. But with the weapons we prepare for you, you need not worry about such things."
"I see... I get it now."
"Now we arrive at the important part. Regarding those obstacles I said you would have to
overcome... While we do give you the opportunity to take revenge, at the same time, we also
summon a detective to pursue you."
"A detective...?"
"Indeed. A single detective is selected based on the total cost of your Deck. The higher the cost
of your Deck, the higher the rank of the detective that will be chosen. On the other hand, if you
keep your costs low, you will receive a low-ranked detective; however, you will not have the
cards necessary to commit a perfect crime."
"What the hell? You mean I have to get chased after from the start?"
"Yes; we believe that Catharsis is only brought about under fair conditions. Standing up to the
obstacle of a detective, in itself, awards pure Catharsis and a sense of fulfillment. If you do not
agree with this way of thinking, then it is clear that our point of view differs from yours, and I will
be forced to report to the higher-ups that nothing came of our talk here today."
"I still don't know what you're thinking... But, just on a personal level, I don't think I'll find any
salvation in taking the coward's way out either," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "You're saying
that the whole point is getting the revenge fair and square, right?"
"Indeed. So you do meet old Endou's expectations perfectly after all. In effect! What is required
of you is not that you successfully exact revenge. It is that you conquer the ordeal of the
detective. Is this acceptable?"
"Yeah."
"Very well then! Let us review the sequence of events. First, you use our funds to purchase our
Techniques. Then, you combine what you have purchased into a plan known as your Deck,
gradually building upon your ideas until you have something practical and concrete.
Subsequently, the Deck that you prepare is turned into a written challenge, which is then sent to
the chosen detective."
"Hey, wait a sec. Written challenge? You go out of your way to send the detective an official
statement on the crime about to happen? That puts me at an obvious disadvantage."
"We wish to provide you with the absolute most fair challenge possible. The strategy starts at
the very beginning. It is essential for you to construct your Deck keeping this knowledge in
mind." The old man's scar twisted. "The only information the detective knows in advance is that
which is in the Deck you have built. Naturally, we do not mention your name, current location,
and so on."
Doesn't that still put me at a big disadvantage? Maybe it's better to keep the cost down as much
as possible for the set of Techniques for the Deck, so that I'll get a lower-ranked detective. Or
maybe I should blow tons of money on it, to use whatever Techniques I want for a perfect
crime...
"Now then, the envelope for the written challenge is embedded with a small chip, which
transmits electro-magnetic waves when the seal is broken. The instant the detective opens the
envelope, that signals the start of the challenge. The conditions for your victory are for you to
murder the target, and then pass 168 hours without being indicted by the detective. When the
time is up, your Catharsis will be complete. And in the event that this occurs—voilà! You will be
repaid with the exact amount of money that your Deck cost. And, so that you are not pursued as
a criminal beyond that, we will apply for you to be placed in a protection program. If you wish,
we will erase all traces of your past up until that point, opening up the possibility of beginning
your life again from scratch, as a new man."
"Is something like that... really possible?" That was the most important part, to him. Starting over
with a new life. If he could do that...
"It is possible."
Those words alone were enough.
"What happens if I lose?"
"You should not worry yourself with what might happen if you lose. However—I would be remiss
not to tell you the answer. I could hardly call that fair, after all. That said, it is roughly as you
might assume. First, the condition for your defeat is ending up in the situation where the
detective indicts you as the criminal within the 168 hours after opening the envelope. At that
moment, you will lose instantly, and you may consider us as having completely broken ties with
you. You will be apprehended by the police as a mere criminal, but you will receive no further
support from us. And no matter how many times you try to turn us into the police, it will do you
no good. Please know this."
"No use for losers, huh?"
"We are people who bring about Catharsis. Our Catharsis is perfect; however, unfortunately,
there are those who cannot achieve it. Often, those people were not adequately prepared to
accept Catharsis."
"What other penalties are there?"
"You will need to pay us for the cost of the Deck you were using."
"Hahaa, so that's how it is. But that'd be useless. No matter where you try to extort it out of me,
the money just ain't there."
"In that case, we will have you enroll in various insurance policies in advance. The recipients will
be people that we have prepared."
"You're saying if I fail, I should just die before the police come arrest me?"
"Indeed. Although this only applies in the event that you are unable to repay the fees yourself."
"You already know I'm not gonna be able to."
"We will retrieve the cost you expended by any means necessary." The old man's expression
did not change. "In order to avoid this, you ought to win against the detective."
"Any other big rules that I should know about?"
"This one is of extreme importance... You will not be permitted to kill the detective. You're free to
kill as many other people as you like, in addition to the target, but please be very sure to allow
the detective we have selected to live. If the detective dies within the provided 168 hours, it will
be counted as your immediate defeat."
"Even if they just die in an accident or something?"
"Indeed. You are also forbidden from causing any significant harm to the detective."
"Harsh."
"A match with no opponent isn't worth watching at all, don't you think?"
Guess it's not gonna fly if I try to bump off the detective in my way first thing. Apparently this
organization is dead-set on having a showdown with a detective.
"I will convey the finer details of the rules to you as soon as your challenge is set in stone." The
old man turned to face him again. "A sublime duel to take back one's life—we call this the Duel
Noir. If only you can win against the detective, a new future will open up to you. Now, how does
that sound to you?"
The answer to that question was more-or-less decided. But he couldn't answer right away. What
the old man said was so far removed from reality, it sounded preposterous. It was peppered
with all these ridiculous words about the Whatever Committee and perfect crimes and whatnot.
He was still cautious about maybe being swindled, even. But he couldn't just laugh it off—not
when it had all been prefaced with the promise to "tell him the true culprit".
If the person who put him in such a miserable state was still out there taking it easy, he could
never forgive them. They would have to pay with their life.
"If I don't say I'll do it, you won't tell me the truth behind the arson five years ago?"
"Indeed."
It was bait.
It was probably just bait to get him involved in this game. But it was such attractive bait. It was
the kind of bait that could mean salvation for someone like him, who had lost everything, who
had become empty inside. If he refused it now, he'd probably regret it for the rest of his life. No
doubt he would keep blaming himself through the rest of his unfulfilling days, asking himself why
he didn't accept the duel.
Instead... Shouldn't I fight? It's better than living like I'm dead.
"I like that look in your eyes." The old man's shoulders shook as he laughed, gently. "One
thing... I do not know if this will influence your decision, but allow me to share with you some
facts from our data. In all of the Duels Noirs that have occurred until now... the detective side
has a victory rate of 28%. Just 28%. That means that over 70% of the time, those who use our
Techniques to exact revenge are able to successfully carry out a perfect crime."
"Are those the real numbers?"
"When we speak of detectives, we are speaking of all of them, from the best to the worst in the
business. There are even those who receive the written challenge and yet don't realize anything
will come of it, sleeping through the entire incident. Well, those are just the most especially
fortunate cases..."
I have about a 30% chance of losing? There's no way, right? I'm going to win this for sure.
"It seems you've made your decision. But we will wait on it for the night. Let the moonlight cool
your head, and if you have still not lost your drive to duel in the morning, then come here
tomorrow at 10 AM. Is that all right with you?"
He nodded at the old man's question.
"I believe you already understand this, but nothing will come of you going and telling anyone
else about this. In the event that you talk to anyone—not just the police, but even one of your
acquaintances—we will not appear before you again."
"I understand."
"Then, until we meet again."

The school I attend is an all-girls' combined middle and high school, with a 150-year-long history
to its name. It's a missionary school world-renowned for schooling young ladies, although in
recent years the religious aspect of it has faded a little. Nowadays, the brickwork church and old
school building are about the only places you can see its missionary history.
Part-time jobs are technically against the rules there, but if you turn in a request to the school,
you'll usually get permission anyway. Still, it seems like I was the first person in the school's
entire history to ask for permission to work as a detective. Though, I mean, as a detective I'm
not really working for a business or for a living; perhaps you could say it's just who I am. Or
maybe it would be better to say that it's a talent. So I kinda wasn't sure if there was any point to
asking permission to be a detective in the first place. The nun who's the headmistress was
happy about it, though. Maybe to her, a detective isn't a state of being or a talent or anything,
olunteer work or something.
but v
At any rate, I'm the only detective in the high school. I'm allowed to wear my uniform during
formal detective activities, so for the sake of my work, I usually wear culotte shorts instead of a
skirt. This apparently garnered me some animosity from upperclassmen, but it also won me a
fair amount of friends.
In order to prioritize my work as a detective, I'm not in any clubs. But it's not like there's always
work for me, so after school, there isn't really much difference between me and someone who
just doesn't participate in anything at all. I just go straight back to the dorm.
I've been living in the school dorm ever since I enrolled. I live in a single small room, 4.5 tatami
mats (or about 9 by 9 feet), with a kitchen, bath, and toilet attached. This is the reality behind a
school for young "ladies". I have classmates who are still envious of dorm life, but the rules are
more strict than the average household, too.
It was December, the winter of my first year of high school, when I opened my personal dorm
mailbox and noticed I'd been sent a black envelope. A completely black B5 envelope, with no
stamp or address. But my name was printed on it in white letters, so there was no doubt that it
was meant for me. I picked it up and headed into the dorm.
"Oh! Welcome back, Yui." In the hall, I ran into a girl who lived in one of the other dorm rooms.
"What's that? Another love letter?"
"No way." I smiled bitterly, looking down at the black envelope. It didn't really look like a love
letter. If it is one, it must have been a pretty eccentric kind of person that sent it.
I'd gotten two love letters in the past. One was from a small squirrel-like girl from the next class
over, a member of the crafts club. I turned her down, of course. I had to. To this very day, I
occasionally catch her lurking in the shadows of the school building, watching me from a
distance. The other one was from a girl who sent me a very poetic letter, but there was no name
attached, so I don't know who sent it. I didn't bother using my detective skills to investigate any
further than that.
I went back into my room, throwing myself down onto the bed with my coat still on. I faced the
ceiling, holding the envelope up under the fluorescent light, and broke the seal. Inside there was
a letter, and then another, smaller black envelope. For the time being, I just unfolded the letter.
A written request
for Yui Samidare-dono
I hope that business is going well for you as we reach the busy schedules of the end of the year.
My name is Yoshizono Ooe, and I am contacting you as a representative for someone else.
Presently, my client is settling a problematic dispute, and so circumstances lead them to send
this written request. Furthermore, please understand that I am unable to reveal their identity to
you here.
The client has reason to believe that their property, the Sirius Observatory, will soon be visited
by a dire emergency situation.
The details of this request will be given to you during an interview at the location given below,
and pending the client's approval, we will plan to contact you again.
Meeting Location: Hatesaki Station

Meeting Date: December 22nd, 3:00 P.M.
Furthermore, you will be compensated with one million yen up front, one million yen upon
completion, and all other necessary expenses paid.
We look forward to meeting you on the scheduled date.
Representative Yoshizono Ooe
The letter said it was a written request, but its contents gave off a more bizarre impression.
Maybe because it didn't have the name of the person making the request, or the details of the
request being made. On one hand, it felt like it was some kind of prank or scam, but on the
other hand, the emphasis of the key points admittedly felt raw and earnest.
It had been about three years since I'd become a detective, but this was the first time I'd gotten
a request quite like this one. I couldn't understand what it meant, no matter how hard I thought
about it. That fact alone piqued my curiosity more than any other incident I'd encountered
before.
The letter was on plain white paper, and the words were clearly typed in word processing
software. Maybe if I investigated the font, I could deduce what software was used. Using the
type of ink it was printed with, I could find out the manufacturer of the printer. But I didn't see
any point in figuring that stuff out.
For the time being, I set the letter aside, and opened up the other black envelope. Inside was a
folded letter on black washi paper. The white characters were written in neat lines with a writing
brush.
A Message for the Detective

Heed the Cry of the Noir
Location: Sirius Observatory, 30 million yen

Weapon: Large shears, 5 million yen
Weapon: Fainting drugs, 5 million yen
Trick: Dismemberment, 80 million yen
Total Cost: 120 million yen
According to the above costs, the following detective is summoned

Yui Samidare
"What is this?" I muttered to myself as I turned the black letter around, staring at it. Curiouser
and curiouser. Judging from the vocabulary used, it might have been hinting at the information
that was hidden from the actual request. Some kind of word association game? Guess at the
request using this? But then what was with the numbers written by the words?
Maybe it was a puzzle I had to solve to prove my worth as a detective. There was no doubt that
the person making the request was trying to test me in some way. Considering how they went
out of their way to use a proxy, they probably wanted to turn away the useless detectives at the
door without giving them any information about the request at all.
It seemed like something big was about to happen. Problem was, it wasn't long until the date of
the meetup. The day after tomorrow was the day. If I turned in a form I could get the day off
from classes, so that was fine, but could I really solve this riddle by then...? There wasn't time.
I jumped up out of bed, flew out of my room, and hurried back towards the school. The school
had a data processing room where you could use the computers for whatever you wanted. If I
needed to do research, using the internet there would probably be the quickest way. (For the
record, I don't have my own computer, and my cellphone can't access the internet.)
It took a few minutes to walk from the dorm to the school building. There were still some
students there who were in the middle of club activities, or who just hadn't gone home yet; I
jogged past them to the data processing room. There were a few students in that room, too,
wordlessly typing on their keyboards. I gave them a sidelong glance before taking one of the
computers for myself.
First, I searched for "Sirius Observatory". I confirmed its existence surprisingly easily.
Apparently, Sirius Observatory was a private observatory owned by a Ryuuichirou Kiba. With a
newfound fortune amassed through the iron industry during the postwar economic boom, he
retired from the business and used the money to build a private observatory, retreating there to
live out his life in seclusion. The word "observatory" brings to mind the sort of establishment
owned by universities and research facilities, but apparently, plenty of people with an interest in
stars and astronomical observation will build their own private-level observatories. Sirius
Observatory, too, seemed to be the product of such a hobby.
So was the mysterious person making the request this Ryuuichirou Kiba person? If he was
involved in the postwar iron industry, at the very least it was possible that he was familiar with
high society. That must have been why he couldn't make his request openly.
I tried researching Ryuuichirou Kiba next, but I couldn't really find anything that seemed
relevant. I couldn't find any record of him being involved in any previous incidents, either. Well,
there's only so much you can turn up by just looking online, after all. I returned to the dorms for
the day without making any more progress than that.
The next day, in class, I was busy thinking about the request. Even though finals were coming
up soon, almost all of the class material just went in one ear and out the other. Even though I
was sitting in my desk, lined up next to my classmates, I felt isolated, as if I alone was in another
world entirely.
During my lunch break, I looked up information on the Kiba family in the library. My school's
library has a larger collection of older books than any other library in the area. But it didn't seem
like I was going to find any crucial information in the short period of time I had for my lunch
break. I left for the time being, resolving to come back after school.
I noticed that the view outside the window was darker than usual during my afternoon classes.
The sky looked like it was going to start snowing any minute. A wintry low-pressure system was
hovering over the east, and from the north, a chill of negative 40 degrees was advancing
towards us through the upper air. No wonder my lips were chapped. As I applied some lip balm
during break, I found myself staring down at the plans for tomorrow written in the letter.
Tomorrow was the day.
After school, I finally got the information I was looking for in the library. In a ten-year-old back
issue of a monthly astronomical journal, I found the words "Sirius Observatory".
It was an article about visiting private observatories: four pages long, with pictures, and about
Sirius Observatory. I made a copy of the article and brought it back to the dorm. I'd managed to
get hold of a pretty good bit of data to look over, hadn't I? Maybe it wouldn't have anything to do
with the request, but at least I felt like I had enough information to answer questions in the
interview without a problem.
That night, I packed up my notes and data, along with a change of clothes and so on just in
case, ready for the next day. My mental preparation also seemed perfect. The only thing I was
worried about was the poor weather. The forecast said there would be some snowstorms
starting tomorrow.
The next day, I skipped school and headed towards Hatesaki Station. By the time I got there, it
was already snowing a little. The surrounding area was full of rice paddies that were dried up for
the winter, and despite the daylight, the snow made it dim and gloomy, with just the occasional
faint light from private residences filtering through.
The time was 2:00 P.M. It was an hour earlier than I was supposed to arrive, but the train only
ran there twice an hour, so I played it safe when I left the dorms, and wound up arriving extra
early. Only two people got off the train with me at this unmanned station.
I went to wait in the waiting room. There were only two benches lined up in the small room, with
a cylindrical stove burning between them. I parked myself in front of the stove immediately,
warming my cold hands.
Then, the two men who got off at the station with me earlier came inside. They both sat
wordlessly on the benches, each checking their watches before looking around themselves. At
this dead-end station, with no signs of life, seemingly at the very edge of the world, three whole
people sitting around and killing time was clearly an unusual situation.
"Um..." I was the first to speak. To be honest, I was afraid. Right then, I was nothing more than a
high school girl surrounded by two unfamiliar men in unfamiliar territory. "Are either of you
Yoshizono Ooe-san?"
Both of the men reacted to my timid question at the same time, exchanging glances as if
fumbling for an answer, before looking back at me.
"Hmm, so, you're a detective too, miss?" The first man to speak had hair neatly parted at a
precise 7:3 ratio. He was wearing a suit and a long coat, along with a tightly fastened glossy
necktie. He was the very picture of a capable salaryman, without any trace of individual
personality in his appearance. If we had been in the business district, he probably would have
melted into the background instantly. He was just that mundane to look at. "I may not look it, but
I'm a detective, too." He pointed at himself with his thumb. "You probably are too, huh?" he
asked the man sitting across from him.
That man was wearing sunglasses. Behind the dim grey lenses, I could just barely see which
direction he was looking. He had short hair and a strong frame. He wore a black tank top
underneath a trench coat, with a dog tag hanging around his neck. Somehow, he gave off the
impression that he wasn't your average Joe. The man in the sunglasses nodded, remaining
silent.
"Three detectives... and still no representative," the man in the suit said theatrically, crossing his
arms.
"Wh-What do you mean?" My voice shook out of nervousness and fear. "I wasn't the only one
contacted for the request?"
"So it seems," the man in the suit said, a bold smile appearing on his face. "There's still time
until the appointment. Who knows how many more people will show up?"
I see... If I thought about it, of course I probably hadn't been the only detective called out. And
that letter with the written request could have been sent to anybody, as long as they just
changed the name on it. If the person making the request was trying to test their detectives, the
most efficient way to do that would be to invite multiple people to come interview.
The two men started killing time in their own ways. The man in the suit was listening to his
headphones as he flipped through a book on English conversation. Exactly how your average
salaryman would try to kill time. On the other hand, the man in the sunglasses was playing with
a foreign coin in his fingers. Occasionally he scared me by apparently remembering something
and letting out a huff of laughter.
Unable to stand the atmosphere, I left the waiting room and went to wait on the bench outside.
My breath was a white haze in the cold air. It looked like it was gradually snowing harder. The
snow started piling up on my hair and shoulders and culottes, so that if I didn't brush it off every
so often, I was in real danger of becoming a snowman.
About half an hour later, a train pulled up to the platform.
One middle-aged man was the only person who got off the train and passed through the ticket
check. He was red-faced and a little chubby, with a shabby coat and unkempt hair. Basically, he
didn't look like he was going to be the mysterious representative.
He went into the waiting room, of course. Through the glass door, I could see the three of them
talking. But finally, the middle-aged man came out by himself, walking over towards me.
"Hmmm, a high school girl detective?" he said, grinning. "Don't think a girl should be
squandering the best years of her life working a thankless job like that, though."
He sat down next to me, bringing the smell of alcohol along with him. Is he drunk in the middle
of the day? No way, right? I immediately shifted on the bench to put space between us.
"Don't act so dubious."
"Um... Are you a detective, too?"
"What the hell else did you think I was?" he asked, spreading out both of his arms. I couldn't
speak for anyone else, but to me, he just looked like a drunk old man. "Well, guess there's some
use in being suspicious. Everyone's got that youthful vitality inside. But how good of a detective
are you really gonna be if your powers of observation fall short?"
"Powers of... observation?"
"Lemme demonstrate." He looked me up and down, gaze licking over my body. "Last year, for
Christmas, you went to sit through mass all by yourself, didn't you? But you got sick of those
boring hymns, so halfway through, you skipped out, bought a whole bunch of cakes, went back
to your dorm room, and tried a little bit of each of them. It was a lonely Christmas from start to
finish."
"H-How did you know that?!" I unthinkingly slipped into an offended tone of voice. But
shockingly, most of what he said was right on the nose. The only part he got wrong was that I
didn't have much money at the time, so instead of buying lots of different cakes, I only had one
chocolate cake. "Were you watching me from somewhere?!"
"No, no, no, these are my powers of observation," he said, looking very pleased with himself.
"First of all, looking at your uniform, I can tell you're a student of that famous missionary school.
It's not too unreasonable to think Christmas mass would be an event hosted by the school. But I
hear school rules have gotten lax over the years, so it's probably not mandatory, just an optional
event, right?"
"How did you know I went by myself?"
"Those shorts you're wearing are pretty unique, huh? You're probably wearing them for your
detective work. Not to mention it's a weekday, but here you are prioritizing a request over going
to school. If you're that gung-ho about your detective work, you probably don't have many
friends to play around with during the rest of your time. And forget about having a boyfriend. On
a special day like Christmas in particular, most everyone's gonna be with the people they're
closest to. You're not the kind of person who has any relationships that deep."
—Mind your own business.
He was right, though.
"Hymns are just no fun as a general rule. I thought maybe you wouldn't be able to put up with
them. You got the hell outta there halfway through so you could go buy some cake. I know you
like sweets, since you've got some candy and chocolate peeking out of your backpack there."
He pointed to my back. Surprised, I pulled my backpack off to check, and saw that the zipper
wasn't closed all the way, and the sweets I brought were in fact peeking out. I hid them quickly,
suddenly self-conscious.
"It's obvious you live in the dorm. If you lived at home, your mother wouldn't let you out of the
house with that wrinkled collar and frayed hem."
The more he pointed things out, the more self-conscious I became, and the more uncanny it felt.
If he could see right through all of my actions just from these tiny details, it felt like I couldn't hide
anything from him.
—Is this what it means to be a detective?
It was our first meeting and I was already overwhelmed by the ability of this person in the same
business as me. I felt like, as a detective, I wasn't even a match for a drunk old man like this.
"You have a little more respect for me now, don'tcha?" He took a small bottle of whiskey out of
his coat pocket, unscrewing the cap. "While I'm at it, aren't you cold waiting out here? How
about I accompany you back inside?"
"Uh... I'm fine. I'll stay out here." I turned him down firmly.
He looked like he was about to accidentally spit out the whiskey he just took a sip of. "Ohhh... I
see. Well, true, it's almost time, so it should be fine waiting out here. I'm heading in. I'm gettin'
up there in age..." The middle-aged man staggered back into the waiting room, rolling his
heavy-looking carry-on bag...
At last, it was almost 3 o'clock, when we were supposed to meet.
I saw a white minivan heading our way, driving up between the rice paddies. It was approaching
quickly, cutting up the grey, snowy landscape. It stopped in front of the station, and out of the
driver's seat came a man in a dark blue suit. He noticed me immediately, and headed my way.
"Would you happen to be waiting for Ooe-sama?" he asked.
"Yes; and you are...?"
"I am with a taxi company. Ooe-sama has requested that I bring all of you to a certain location."
So we still don't get to meet the representative? I started to get a little worried about where this
was going. The weather kept getting worse, and everyone else I was traveling with was an older
man...
"Please, do get in the car."
I got in the minivan like the driver told me to. I got in the very back, and put my backpack on the
seat next to me so no one else would sit there. The men in the station's waiting room noticed
the van too, and started to come out and file in. The man in the suit got in first, and then the
man in the sunglasses. The drunk old man got in last. He didn't seem to care where he sat, and
sat right behind the driver's seat, sitting his carry-on bag on the seat next to him.
The driver returned and got back behind the wheel. "My apologies, but please wait for a moment
before we depart. It isn't too cold inside the car, is it? Would you like something hot to drink?"
He started distributing cans of coffee that he'd been carrying in his arms. I was chilled down to
my bones, so I took a can gratefully, holding it in my hands.
"What do you mean, 'please wait for a moment'?" asked the man in the suit. "Let's hurry up and
get going."
"It is not yet 3 o'clock."
"There's no one else at the station."
"There's a train arriving at 2:58," muttered the man in the sunglasses.
"Who else is gonna show up? If they are coming, they're late."
"Now, now, don't be so impatient. You want some of this?" The drunk old man held out a bottle.
"I don't drink." The man in the suit brushed off the bottle, opened the can of coffee, and started
to drink that instead. Then he took a cigarette out of his breast pocket and started to light it up.
"My apologies, but smoking is not permitted inside the car," said the driver.
"Say what?" The man in the suit raised his voice in irritation, reluctantly putting away the
cigarette. I just observed the adults fussing from the back of the car, drinking my coffee and
warming myself up.
Right about then, a train pulled up to the platform. But here from outside the building, I couldn't
see anyone getting off of it. The little two-car train was almost entirely blocked from view by the
building. But I saw it again before long, pulling away and heading off into the snow.
Did anyone actually get off?
Just as it was turning 3 o'clock, I saw a girl at the ticket barrier. She was small and frail.
—Who is she?
She looked transparent to me. Maybe because her cold, pale skin looked like it was blending
into the snowy landscape. A ghost...? No, that would be ridiculous. Her evenly cut bangs
fluttered in front of her eyes in the wind. That faint swaying was undeniable proof that she
actually existed there in the physical world. Maybe it was appropriate for someone like her to be
standing in a corner of this lifeless, dreary world, but as far as a detective appearing before us
went, she looked completely out of place.
She saw the van and, cautious of the snow beneath her feet, ran up to it with a soft crunch
crunch, holding her black bag in both hands...
Is she the fifth detective? Do you expect me to believe that? After all, the clothes she was
wearing—a frilly blouse and black blazer—those were none other than the uniform of the junior
high section of my school. The color of the ribbon on her chest showed that she was a first-year
in middle school.
She stood to the side of the van, making herself taller to peer inside. It didn't seem like she
could see us very well from out there.
The driver stepped out of the van. "Would you happen to be waiting for Ooe-sama?" he asked,
and she bobbed her head in a nod. "Please come in. We have been awaiting your arrival."
At his invitation, she stepped into the van. She didn't look particularly surprised to see that
several people were already inside. Actually, it was the other men who were left speechless by
the appearance of such a young detective. I picked up my backpack, opening up a seat for her.
She wordlessly sat down, placing her bag on her lap and holding it there with her arms.
"Now then, it is time for us to depart." The driver started the engine. The van, with five
detectives inside, finally started up a road it would not come back down.
The van went up a snowy mountain road with no buildings in sight, let alone any people.
"Hey, you. Can we talk for a sec?" I asked in a low voice to the girl sitting next to me. "Do you
know why we're in this car?"
She just barely tilted her head as she turned towards me.
"Are you a detective?"
She nodded.
"Really? I sure haven't heard anything about any middle school detectives going to my school..."
"I only recently transferred to my current school," she said, opening her mouth for the first time.
She looked up at me with wide eyes that stared right through me. Though her skin was pale, the
cold had made her cheeks slightly red, as if she were wearing blush. It was cute.
"Oh, okay, a transfer student... But wait, a middle school detective from the same school as me
getting the same request as me... That's a weird coincidence."
"A strange coincidence indeed," the drunk old man said, turning around to face us as soon as
the car started driving.
"Hey Uncle Badtouch, quit making passes on little girls when you're drunk. And don't give me
any 'jokes' about cops owing favors to detectives. You don't even deserve to be a detective," the
man in the suit interrupted forcefully. "Sheesh. Honestly. Drunkenly creeping on kids... I can't
believe we're in a white van right now. Is this some kind of knockoff candid camera show?"
"Look who's talking, greenhorn." The drunk old man's expression suddenly became serious.
"I've been a full-time detective for twenty-five years. I'm not just some loudmouth drunkard."
"Oh, well, maybe you should look at this. This might sober you up." The man in the suit pulled
out some kind of photo ID card from an inner jacket pocket, and showed it off with a smirk.
Eigo Amino: DSC #367
"My name's Eigo Amino. My Detective Shelf Collection number is 367—so what's yours, old
man? Don't tell me you're not even registered."
"Hmph," the drunk old man snorted, before starting to rummage around for something, sticking
his hand in different pockets. Finally he found the card he was looking for, and showed it to
Amino.
Kou Inuzuka: DSC #943
"N-Number 943...? You... No, you couldn't be... Number 9, Class 3? R-Really?"
"This ain't no fake ID," the man called Inuzuka said, taking a swig from his bottle.
"I-I'm so sorry! I had no idea that you were so high-class... Please find it in your heart to forgive
my many transgressions!" Amino suddenly bowed his head.
It kinda felt like I was getting a glimpse of the sordid adult world here. Still, I never would have
guessed that that drunk old man would be Class 3, either. They say you shouldn't judge a book
by its cover...
"What's Class 3?" the girl next to me asked.
"You don't know?"
"No," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Is it that remarkable?"
"As far as us detectives go." I took out my own Detective Library membership card from my
wallet to show her.
Yui Samidare: DSC #888
"You don't have a card like this?"
"I only recently registered." She took a notebook out of her bag, and slipped a card out from
between the pages.
Kyouko Kirigiri: DSC #919
"Whoa, you're Number 9 too. Number 9 in middle school... You've really got your work cut out
for you there," I said in surprise.
All of the detectives registered with the Detective Library have a numbered card. The Detective
Library—it's lined with shelves categorizing informational files on roughly 65,500 detectives.
Information on the registered detectives is made available to the public, so anyone can come
browse the files freely. If you're in trouble, you should definitely head on down to the Detective
Library. You'll find out which detectives can help you with your problem, and view records of
their past cases.
For detectives, the primary benefit of registering with the Detective Library is getting more
requests sent your way. It's like a specialized dispatch registry. Though it's not their job to play
the middleman or make any introductions, since the idea is that "The Detective Library is a
database without bias." Detectives may lose their anonymity due to their data being freely
accessible, but no information on a case is published until it's resolved, so I don't think it's that
big of a deal. They only publish the most relevant information for past records and personal info
too.
The Detective Library made its own classification system for their data, in order to sort the files
onto the different shelves. They call this the Detective Shelf Collection, but what it really means
is that all of the detectives get classification numbers. DSC classifications are three-digit
numbers.
The first number is the most general sorting, designating a detective's field of specialization.
Using Amino's 367 as an example, this would be the 3. It refers to white-collar crime—his
specialty is cases that involve embezzlement, breach of trust, and so on. Number 9's like
Inuzuka and Kirigiri specialize in murder cases, so you could say they're the superstars of the
detective world. But there are also a lot of them who fail without ever fulfilling their requests. I
hear that a lot of them die while working their cases, too.
Next, the number in the middle is the second level of sorting. It indicates even more specific
specialties under the umbrella category of the first number. In Amino's case, I guess the 6
means he specializes in corporate espionage. Just looking at him, I wouldn't be surprised if he
worked as a corporate spy himself.
And then—
"The last number indicates the detective's rank. Everyone starts at Rank 9. You just registered,
so that's why you're a 9, too. The number starts going up little by little as a detective gets more
recognition for their work. You can't just make it to Rank 3 overnight, so that old man must be an
amazing detective, even if you couldn't tell just by looking at him. The highest rank is Rank 0, by
the way. The zero is proof that you've mastered your craft."
Detectives with a zero in their classification have earned the respect of their peers. They're
called things like Zeroes, or Zero Class. If Rank 0 detectives keep working their way up, they
can get a 0 for their middle number too, which indicates proficiency in all specializations. They're
called Double-Zero Class detectives, and their number tells you right from the get-go that they're
at the very top of their field. It's the so-called Great Detective class. If they go even further, they
can get a 0 for their first number that shows proficiency in all of those categories, and join the
ranks of the legendary Triple-Zero Class. I've heard that in the fifteen or so years of Detective
Library history, only four detectives have ever earned the number 000.
"So, would you say that becoming Zero Class is the same as receiving recognition as a
detective?" Kyouko Kirigiri asked. Her eyes were full of innocence—like a child who'd found a
map to some buried treasure.
"Well, I guess... But I'll tell you right now, it's not gonna be easy. Actually, I was around your age
when I first became a detective, but this is as far as I've gotten in three whole years."
"Lemme see that." Amino forcefully snatched my card out of my hands. "What?! ...Y-You're
Rank 8 in high school... W-Well, I'm still out of your league. Too bad, Detective Schoolgirl!" He
seemed kinda jittery.
"What about you, Shady Boy? You've got a card, right?" Inuzuka asked the man in the
sunglasses.
He silently took it out of his pocket to show us.
Shiita Enbi: DSC #245
"Wh-What...? Rank 5... You're higher-ranked than I am..." Amino was trembling. It's true that
rank numbers are a good general indicator of a detective's ability, but I'm not sure it's worth
waving it around the way he did.
"So we all have cards?" Enbi asked, idly.
"Nothin' strange about someone goin' to the Detective Library and findin' detectives there to
send their request to," slurred Inuzuka. "But if I were the one makin' a request, I'd head straight
for the Zero Class section..."
"That's certainly true. But perhaps they just thought they'd try inviting detectives from all different
kinds of classes to see how it went," said Amino. He was evidently acting completely deferential
to Inuzuka now. Maybe he was just really adaptable from going up against corporate spies all
the time.
"Hmph... Guess that's true. Everyone's got different specialties too. Our esteemed host appears
to be rather eccentric."
"Huh? You know who made the request?"
"Yeah, when you get on my level, you can figure out who's making a request right away, even if
they're anonymous."
"Who exactly are they?"
"Ryuuichirou Kiba. He's a big name in the underworld. Right now, we're headed to a private
observatory that he personally oversaw the construction on. Ain't that right, driver?" Inuzuka
called over to the driver's seat. The driver, however, remained silent. Maybe his hands were tied
by an order not to answer any questions.
"It said Sirius Observatory in the letter," said Amino. "I wonder what sort of place it is exactly.
Perhaps you would be knowledgeable on that subject, Inuzuka-san..."
"You didn't even look into that before showing up, greenhorn? I guess I'll have to be the one to
explain." Inuzuka didn't sound half as put-out as he was pretending to be. Apparently he was
completely on board with Amino. "If you look at it from above, Sirius Observatory looks like a
five-pointed star. Apparently, the telescope dome is in the part that makes the pentagon in the
middle of it."
As much as Inuzuka was talking like he was an expert, I'd already learned all of this in my own
investigation. If even I had been able to easily access an astronomy periodical article on the
subject, then maybe all the other detectives were also just pretending that they didn't already
know this.
"The name Sirius itself refers to an extremely bright star—the brightest star in Canis Major, and
one of the vertices of the Winter Triangle. But actually, this star—"
"Is actually what?" humored Amino.
"It looks like one star, but it's actually two—it's what they call a binary star."
"S-Say what?!"
"The especially bright one is called Sirius A, and the smaller one is called Sirius B. Sirius B is
blocked out by Sirius A's light, so it wasn't discovered until telescope technology progressed far
enough."
"If Sirius Observatory was named that way... then could it be that it was also constructed with
two buildings?"
"Sharp of you to notice, Amino-kun. That's right—just like the stars, Sirius Observatory has two
star-shaped buildings, with one of them bigger than the other. Sirius A, the bigger one, is the
main building, and Sirius B, the smaller one, is a separate building that serves as the entryway.
If there's one thing you can tell for certain from how strange the owner made the buildings, it's
that he's a total loon."
"That's just what I'd expect from a Class 3 detective! Who could have thought that you could do
such exhaustive research prior to your arrival?"
"I know, I know." Inuzuka smiled in satisfaction.
His self-congratulatory explanation continued on from there. Most of the information had been
written in the periodical, so I ignored it, gazing out the window at the pure white scenery. It had
been probably over an hour since we'd started driving. It was snowing pretty hard outside, and
the forest was covered in white. As we drove down the narrow mountain road, the snowy
branches formed an arch overhead.
Abruptly, the van stopped, right in the middle of nowhere.
"Hey driver, what's the deal?"
"We have arrived at our destination," said the driver, turning to face us.
I peered out the window. The road was surrounded by trees, but there wasn't a single building in
sight.
"What do you mean? Quit joking around!" Amino shouted.
"Are you saying we need to walk from here?" asked Enbi, in a low voice.
"Yes. Ooe-sama has provided instructions along those lines. If I am to drop you all off here,
there will be arrangements made for your return."
"There's no reason to drop us off here. You'll be inconveniencing Inuzuka-sensei as well."

Amino had lost his own volume control. "I get it, I'll pay you, so just bring us all the way to the
Sirius Observatory. Just go on and reset the meter."
"I regret to inform you that I am unable to fulfill such a request."
"You're not going to let me pay for your taxi service? Ohohoh, really? What kind of taxi driver
are you? Inuzuka-sensei, what do you think we should do with this here fellow? I think we
should teach him what happens when you insult a detective..."
"Now, just calm down, greenhorn. It looks like our client doesn't want anyone other than the
detectives getting up close. As detectives, it's part of our job to intuit how our client feels when
they pull something like this." Inuzuka smiled, self-satisfied, grabbing his bag and opening the
door. And so, he left the first footprints in the pristine white snow.
"You had a close call just now," Amino spat at the driver, as he also got out of the van.
Enbi followed, wordlessly stepping out of the vehicle. He adjusted his sunglasses on his face,
hoisting his small overnight bag onto his shoulder.
"C'mon, we'd better get out too," I prompted Kirigiri.
She stood up, bag in hand, but paused on the step out to peer over at the driver and ask, "How
did Yoshizono Ooe give you your directions?"
"Can you clarify what you mean by... how?" asked the driver in return.
"Did you meet them in person?"
"No, I simply received my directions over the phone. I have not met them in person. I also had
this minivan provided and pointed out for me."
"What was their voice like?"
"What... was their voice like... I judged it to be a standard male voice, but I could not tell you
anything further than that."
"I see," said Kirigiri, clipped, before she got out of the van as if nothing had happened.
What was all that about? Did she want to know who the proxy was? Either way, it seemed as if
the driver was only taking a job and following orders.
I was the last one to get out of the van. And then, with all five detectives out, it heartlessly drove
back down the snowy road, leaving only tire tracks that quickly disappeared under the falling
snow. We were left completely deserted out in the mountains.
"We're gonna be in trouble if we don't make it to Sirius Observatory before it gets dark," Inuzuka
said, spreading his hands as if he were catching the snow in his arms.
Enbi was the first to start walking. For a single moment his posture became hunched over like
his leg was stuck in the snow, but he recovered quickly. "It's pretty deep. Be careful," he advised
over his shoulder.
Judging by his physique and personality, among other things, I felt like he was the most
dependable of our group. His classification number was 245: Political Crime - Terrorism, Rank
5. That meant he was a detective who fought back against terrorists. Maybe his reticent, gloomy
disposition came from his background. And maybe he walked like he was dragging his legs
along because old wounds from the battlefield forced him to walk that way.
"Anyway... There's only one road, so we should probably just keep heading down this way," I
said, and Inuzuka and Amino each gave me a look of understanding before following after Enbi.
"Let's go, Kirigiri-chan." I gave her a little push on the back to usher her away from where she'd
been standing after being deserted in the snow.
Kirigiri turned, her youthful brow wrinkled. "Perhaps we should head back."
"Huh? After coming all this way? Are you going to walk back?"
"I can hear footsteps."
"Footsteps?" It was quiet where we were standing, perhaps because of the snow. But I still
couldn't hear any footsteps. I tilted my head, staring back at her.
Her face only looked only more vexed at that, as if she understood that she wasn't getting her
meaning across. She looked over in the direction the men had already gone. "I suppose I
shouldn't just abandon ship..." she muttered, beginning to walk.
"Ah, wait a minute!" I hurriedly followed after her. She looked like she would disappear into the
snow if I took my eyes off her for even a moment. It didn't take me long to pass her, looking
back at her over my shoulder. "You keep saying things I don't understand."
"Aren't you bothered by it?" asked Kirigiri, facing forward.
"By what?"
"The strange request."
"I mean... The whole thing bothers me, but..."
"Does the person known as Yoshizono Ooe even exist, I wonder?"
"Huh?" I tilted my head.
"Yoshizono Ooe... If you read the characters for Yoshizono a different way, you could
pronounce them as Yuuen... U. N. Ooe."
"You don't mean... U . N. Owen, do you? No, come on, you're just imagining things, right?"
That's a name from the famous mystery novel, And Then There Were None. It's a story where
ten people are killed one after the other on an isolated island, after all of them receive written
invitations by a U. N. Owen. It was a play on the word unknown. "Even if hypothetically the
proxy was U. N. Owen, what would they be trying to accomplish with that? You aren't trying to
say that they're going to reenact And Then There Were None, are you? If they sign their name
as a hint like that on purpose, then what are they going to do if someone ends up finding them
out before anything happens?"
"It doesn't seem as if anyone's figured it out yet." Kirigiri pointed at the men walking ahead of us.
"No, but, still... You're just thinking too much, right?"
"That would be nice," Kirigiri said, shrugging. Did she sense some kind of danger from whatever
the truth was behind that bizarre letter?
"For now, let's just stick with those guys. If we get left behind in the snowy mountains like this,
we'll freeze to death before we can even accept the request," I said, to which Kirigiri nodded,
following after me. With how short her stride was, she had to work hard just to keep up. I walked
more slowly to match her pace. "Incidentally," I piped up, "why did you decide to become a
detective? When you're a detective in middle school, that alone means you have to have some
reason behind it, right?"
"...I didn't decide to become anything."
"Huh?"
"I was a born detective."
"Heheh, what, are you trying to be like, hard-boiled with that?" I asked jokingly. Though in her
case, I'd say she was more cute-boiled than hard-boiled.
But she wore a grave expression without even a hint of laughter. It seemed she was serious
about this.
"Is your family maybe in the detective business, then?"
"Yes," Kirigiri answered succinctly, as she brushed off the snow piling on top of her head.
"Ohhh, so you're going to inherit the family business."
"That's right." This time, her voice sounded like it was hiding some pride.
"You weren't put off by it?"
By what? her face seemed to say as it looked up at me.
"Family business or not, detective work is something else. There are plenty of other life choices
out there in the world, right? You could have been an idol, or a nurse, or a baker... People have
been telling me for ages that girls aren't meant to be detectives."
"I've never thought of it in terms of like or dislike," answered Kirigiri, expressionless. "To me,
being a detective and being alive are the same thing."
"That sounds like, super heavy... Are you saying that's what you've been taught?"
"Yes," Kirigiri affirmed readily. She looked like she had never once doubted it as fact. I got the
feeling that I looked all the more fragile in her eyes for their clarity. I was sure I could never
imagine the kind of pedigree she was coming from.
Kirigiri kept glancing over at me intermittently, like she wanted to say something else. "Yeees?" I
prompted, and she quickly averted her eyes before opening her mouth to speak.
"...What about you?"
"Hm? You mean, why did I become a detective? Well, obviously... I wanted to be an ally of
justice... I guess. Rescuing those in need! Yeah, that's gotta be what a detective is meant for."
She didn't show any particular reaction to my passionate tone of voice. Actually, she was
looking at me like I was some kind of strange, unfamiliar creature.
"What's with that face? I'm being serious here."
"Hmmm... I see."
"You're the one who asked, so why are you trying to act like now you don't care? Now that I
think of it, even if it's just temporary, you're going to the same school as me as an
underclassman, so why don't you try showing me some respect? I'm not saying you should get
all formal on me, but you could at least do a little more..."
"Such as?"
"Right..." I had a sudden idea. "If we're three years apart, then I'm more of a big sister than just
an upperclassman. So... you should address me as Onee-chan. How about that?"
"Onee-sama?"
"N-No, you don't have to get that fancy. Chan, not sama. Onee-sama would be kinda
embarrassing."
"Yui-oneesama."
"S-Stop, you're embarrassing me! Let's do something different after all."
"It doesn't matter what I call you," Kirigiri said with a sigh. "We should hurry and keep going
instead. We're going to be left behind, Yui-oneesama."
"You're doing that on purpose!" I covered my face automatically, writhing. This had barely even
started, and I could already see it becoming my dark past further down the line. Everyone was
going to misunderstand.
Kirigiri started walking ahead by herself. I let out a cry of protest and hurried after her.
I suddenly saw the men ahead of us, stopped in the road and apparently considering
something. Kirigiri and I jogged up to them. They were standing in front of a large sign.
"Welcome to the Despairesque Sirius Observatory".
I didn't know if this was some prank or what, but someone had taken red spraypaint and
changed "p icturesque" into "despaire
sque". At the time, we were strangely indifferent to the
ominous hint. Well, that was because we were more concerned with the fact that it meant we
were getting close to the Sirius Observatory.
We followed the arrow on the sign, and sure enough, we found a narrow road in that direction.
"The arrow isn't part of the prank too, is it?" quipped Amino, crossing his arms.
"I don't think they're trying to get us in an accident." Inuzuka was calm, but perhaps that was to
be expected. "Even if this is a trap, we don't have to worry about keeping warm. I got enough
booze for everyone!" he said, patting his bag.
"What about the minors?"
"They can use their body heat." A lecherous grin appeared on his face.
Inuzuka may have been Class 3, but I couldn't summon an ounce of respect for him. A great
detective should be an upright and virtuous gentleman... Maybe that was just a stereotype
coloring my opinion. Regardless, when it came right down to it, he was Class 3. Surely
detectives who were Class 2 or 1 were more wonderful people than he was. To say nothing of
Zero Class detectives, who must be on a completely different level...
Enbi led the way down the road, and the other men followed.
At this rate, if the sun sets on us, we really might be dead meat. The snowy forest road grew
gradually darker, and the wind grew stronger. There was no sign of anything moving other than
our group continually trudging forward. The men didn't bother slowing down for me or Kirigiri,
and they pulled further and further ahead of us. In the dim light, we had nothing to follow except
their shadows and their footprints.
Suddenly, Kirigiri pointed ahead of us. "Look, Yui-oneesama. There's light."
I peered through the veil of the snowstorm, and sure enough, I could see the faint lights of a
building. But, wait a minute... "You're still calling me that..."
Kirigiri ignored me, walking forward.
—Well, whatever.
The building stood on a slightly elevated clearing, its warm light tinting its white surroundings
red. The light was probably spilling out from the interior through the glass panels. Fittingly for
the representation of the brightest star down here on Earth, its radiance cut through the gaps in
the darkness. But—maybe because the snowstorm blowing around us was obstructing my
vision—the panorama looked warped, like a mirage or illusion.
Finally, we had managed to drag ourselves to the Sirius Observatory.
Just like Inuzuka had explained—and, well, like I had already found out from my research
beforehand—the Sirius Observatory was a pair of star-shaped buildings. Though, from our
viewpoint, it was hard to say whether it really was a star. It just looked like a flat wall to me.
We came across the smaller building first. This was Building B, modeled after Sirius B. I was
pretty sure this one was supposed to be the separate building for the entranceway. The walls
were all glass panels, so I could see everything inside. I could see the main Building A gleaming
off behind Building B, too.
We all ran into Building B to escape the snow. The automatic front door opened to greet us.
Finally, we were somewhere protected from the snowstorm. I patted down my chest, which felt
chilled to the bone.
As we entered, the stairs leading underground were right there in front of us. This was the way
to the real front door.
"Why'd they have to build it in such an annoying way?" Amino deplored, brushing his disheveled
hair back into its exacting part. "We have to go through this underground tunnel just to get to the
main building?"
"They wanted to put observational guest rooms going in all directions, so that's why they didn't
put the front door on the main building, apparently," I said, remembering the answer from my
research.
"Still... No one's coming to get us." Inuzuka stepped down the stairs to stand in front of the large
double doors that formed the true entranceway. There was an intercom on the wall next to
them. Inuzuka slammed his hand on the button—but there was no response. "It looks like the
lights are on, so I doubt it's that no one's there, but..." He tilted his head.
"Maybe they stepped out on some urgent business?"
"There weren't any footprints around the entrance, were there? No one's come in or out of here
in hours."
"Oh! Now that you mention it, it was exactly as you say," Amino said in admiration.
"No Kiba is one thing, but what's with the proxy being missing too?" Inuzuka put his hand on the
door. "Hm? It's open."
The door opened silently.
"I don't sense anyone," Enbi said, peering warily past the door. "You people wait here." He
nimbly crept through the door, and then called back, "Clear." We entered too, as directed by that
over-dramatized signal.
"They're not even gonna come greet us? This client is absolutely incomprehensible," Amino
said, irritated.
From there, we traveled down the underground passage for about 20 meters. It wasn't as dark
and damp as one might envision from the words "underground passage"—there were recessed
lights every few meters which made it seem more like an aisle in a movie theater. At the end of
the passageway, there was another double door just like the first one. There was no keyhole. It
opened easily with a pull of the handle.
At last, we'd made it to the main building.
This time, we went up the stairs to the surface level. A strangely bright light streamed down from
above. We all acted like we were on the lookout as we ascended.
"Hohoh, so this is the Sirius Observatory," said Inuzuka, in admiration.
The first thing we laid eyes on was the dome-shaped ceiling. Looking from the inside, it was
completely mirrored. So basically, we had a half-sphere concave mirror overhead. It was this
mirror that was increasing the intensity of the light.
"What's all this? It feels like we got tossed into some freaky lab equipment," muttered Amino.
"It reminds me of Ranpo's 'Hell of Mirrors'. Though that was a full sphere that was all mirrored
on the inside..." A smirk appeared on Inuzuka's face. "Did you know a concave lens is one of
the integral parts of astronomical observation? Most larger telescopes use them."
Our distorted, enlarged reflections appeared on the ceiling. In the world of the concave mirror,
we weren't just flipped left to right, but upside down as well. The uncanny face of my warped
reflection looked down at me. It wasn't very comforting.
"Mirrors sure are strange. They're portals into another world just slightly off from the world we
know, opened up right there in front of us. Goodness gracious, our good friend Ryuuichirou Kiba
is quite the eccentric romantic."
Inuzuka seemed very moved, but according to my research, the concave mirroring on the
ceiling was just aluminum paneling covering the interior of the dome to heighten insulation and
illumination. Due to the structure of the building, there were no windows in the central hall.
That's why they needed something to brighten things up. There was no way of knowing whether
or not the owner of the building was actually all that enamored with mirrors.
Once we had all finished climbing the stairs, we were finally able to survey the hall as a whole. It
was in the shape of an equilateral, regular pentagon. Each side had a door in the middle that led
to a guest room. Five doors in all, leading to five triangular guest rooms that formed the five
points of the star.
In the center of the hall, there was a large, round table. Nearby was a small armchair. By
"armchair", I mean a comfortable living chair with arms meant for one person to sit and relax on.
There's a detective called the Armchair Detective that solves crimes right where he is without
even going to the crime scene itself. The chair there before me looked perfect for a great
detective just like that one to comfortably think things through, with its upholstery featuring an
extremely cushy seat and backrest, supported by wooden legs.
That was everything in the hall. The telescope, which should have been the centerpiece of the
whole thing, was nowhere to be seen.
"Huh...? There was a big telescope set up right here in the photos..." I said, crossing my arms.
"A year and three months ago, Ryuuichirou Kiba was taxed extra for tax evasion..." Enbi had
suddenly opened his mouth. "He was overdue, so the telescope itself was collected as payment.
They probably just cleaned out the whole area. That's the government for you. They're always
like that. They don't give a crap about the places they visit..."
"H-How do you know that?" I asked in surprise.

"You'd know if you'd looked into it," he answered calmly. "Incidentally, the whole building was
put up for sale two months ago. It was bought by a certain IT startup company. But it seems like
that was just a shell corporation for some other enterprise. I wasn't able to dig up what they
were hiding."
"Why are you only now mentioning this?" Amino cut in.
"Info is what we deal in, isn't it? What kind of idiot gives their merchandise out for free?" Enbi's
voice cut like a switchblade, leaving Amino with no response.
"If Enbi-kun's telling the truth, that means Ryuuichirou Kiba's already given up the building," said
Inuzuka, his face clouding over.
"So the Kiba guy's completely unrelated... I-In that case... Who exactly is our client?" asked a
dismayed Amino.
No one could answer the question.
"A-At any rate, there's nothing we can do but wait for that proxy to show up—Ooe, or whoever. If
they're acting this high and mighty, the client might be a seriously big name," said Amino.
We looked at each other, and then let our eyes wander, not looking at anything specific. My
chest now felt like it might let out an audible creak from all the small doubts and insecurities I
was holding pent up inside...
"If the owner isn't here, let's just give up on being polite and search the place." Apparently,
Inuzuka wasn't letting himself be discouraged quite yet. Maybe this is where I should be saying
that you could tell he was Class 3. He opened the nearest door and peered inside the room.
"Hey, Kirigiri-chan, why don't we look around too?" I called out to her.
"It will be more efficient for us all split up," she responded calmly, moving further into the hall.
Just when I'd started to think that maybe we were friends, she goes and does this. It felt like I
was being scolded by someone younger than me.
Crestfallen, I peered into a random room.
It was just like the room from the magazine article. The room itself was triangular, but since
there was a closet on the right and a bathroom on the left with a toilet and shower, in practical
terms it was more like the shape of a home plate stretched out. The bed was next to the closet,
and across from that was a dresser and a mini-fridge.
The two legs of the isosceles triangle were almost half glass, probably designed to give guests
a good view. But even when I drew back the curtains and looked outside, all I could see was
white snow swirling in the dark forest. Even if it were midday and not snowing, I don't think the
view would have been all that great. These windows probably weren't there to look at things on
ground level. They were there to look up at the starry sky.
At the very far end of the room, around where the legs of the triangle met in a point, there was a
telescope. Unlike the larger telescope that had been taken in collections, this was the kind of
telescope made for personal use. Though, it was bigger and thicker than what I would imagine
as the standard telescope. I guess this is what a large aperture looks like. I'm sure the price is
proportional.
After opening the curtains, I looked in the eyepiece experimentally. But, of course, all I could
see was a hazy darkness. No stars. With some effort, I changed the angle of the telescope,
pointing it into the room. Now when I looked in, I could see through the open door into the hall,
though the image was severely blurred.
"Gettin' up to no good already, huh?"
A giant monster appeared in the lens. I let out a short shriek, tearing my eyes away from the
telescope. Inuzuka was standing in the doorway.
"Don't scream like that. People are gonna get the wrong idea," said Inuzuka, flustered. Sure
enough, Amino came running into the room just a moment behind.
"Did something happen?"
"No, nothing to see here, unfortunately." Inuzuka rubbed at his forehead, trying to make himself
look non-threatening. "The rooms are all set up the same. Great place for astronomy."
"Honestly, if only it wasn't for the weather out there, maybe I could discover at least one star,"
clucked Amino.
"They're still good telescopes. German 200mm Newtonian reflecting telescopes. Look, see
here? There's no lens at the end of the tube, is there? You can see right through to the concave
mirror there in the back."
"Right, and unlike other telescopes, the part you look into is on the side of the tube. I tried
looking through one earlier in a different room, and I could just barely manage to see Building
B." Amino gladly went along with Inuzuka's talk.
"Right, right. Those other telescopes you're talking about are your average, garden variety
refracting telescopes. That type uses a lens to converge the images inside the tube. That's
hands down the easiest for a beginner to use since it's a straight line from the lens you're
looking in to where the star is."
Inuzuka had gotten started now, rambling on about telescope trivia in his slurred drunken
speech. I didn't care about telescopes, so I checked in the closet and bathroom. Nothing really
caught my eye.
"On the other hand, a reflecting type like this one can have a larger aperture for cheaper. 'Cuz
you're not using a lens, you're using a concave mirror. The image gets reflected in the mirror,
and then another mirror inside reflects it again off to the side, so the eyepiece is on the side of
the tube. No points for guessin' Newton's the one who invented it."
"You certainly are knowledgeable about astronomical observation, Inuzuka-sensei..."
"I was in Astronomy Club back in school. Hahaha!"
By which you mean, all your info is over twenty years out of date.

I opened the refrigerator, ignoring the conversation. Inside were some well-chilled bottles of
mineral water and cola, along with a couple beer cans. I checked the best-by date on the
mineral water. Still a ways off. It was probably safe to say that the fridge had been restocked
relatively recently.
I exited the room, leaving Inuzuka and Amino behind. In the hall, Enbi was leaning against the
table, arms crossed. "Did you find anything?" I asked.
"No... Nothing."
"I looked in that room over there, but there wasn't really anything there either. There weren't any
cryptic cryptograms or books missing pages or... anything, anywhere."
"We weren't called here to go treasure hunting..." Enbi sighed.
That's when Inuzuka and Amino came back. "We took off all the sheets, took a peek into the
telescope, tried turning on the shower, and didn't find a single thing that looked suspicious. No
trace of our mysterious client either, of course."
After that, Kirigiri came out of a different room. She just shook her head silently.
"Hmmmmm, no dice, huh..."
"What should we do, Inuzuka-sensei? I mean, we can't exactly walk back in all this snow. My
cellphone... Yep, just like I thought. Out of range. I can't make a call from here. We can't call for
help."
"Hey now, hold your horses. It's too early to say we should be leaving the place. The proxy
might still show up, y'know?" Inuzuka said, looking as carefree as ever.
"Do you really think the proxy is going to show up...?" Amino was finally starting to doubt him, it
seemed.
Were we all gathered here for some criminal plan? Is this some kind of trap...?
"Shouldn't we forget about the client already?" Enbi drawled.
"Right, I agree with your point of view, Enbi-kun," said Inuzuka. "But that's exactly we should
start expecting the client. Maybe the interview has already begun. They're putting our patience
to the test. So don't you think we should stay true to the client in order to pass?"
"It would be nice if that were the truth..." Amino murmured gravely.
"We can't go back either way. We're all prepared to spend the night here, right? We've got
exactly five rooms lined up right here."
"You're going to sleep in a place like this?"
"Are you gonna head back by yourself, Amino-kun? I don't think anyone's gonna complain about
havin' one less rival around." Inuzuka crossed the hall with an easygoing grin. "I'm gonna
borrow this room here." After deciding on his own room without anyone else's input, Inuzuka
went in and closed the door behind him.
Seeing this, Enbi silently went into the closest room and closed the door behind him, too.
"Something's not right with those two." Amino set his thin briefcase on the table with a thud. "If I
knew it was going to turn out like this, I would have prepared way more. This is all I brought with
me. I don't even have a change of clothes."
All Kirigiri and I could do was look at him in pity.
"Don't tell me you two are planning on staying here too?"

"We don't really have a choice... At the very least, we should wait until the night is over if we
wanna be able to walk back," I said.
"Hey, why don't the three of us work together to look and see if there's anyone in the area? I
have a bad feeling about this job. Maybe we'd be able to find some help if we all left. Don't you
think we should get out of here as soon as possible?"
"Of course I have a bad feeling about doing this, but it's still better than going outside. We're
dead meat if we go out there in a snowstorm in the middle of the night."
"You're gonna regret this. You think this is better...? You can't say that until you see how it turns
out," deplored Amino, clutching his briefcase and heading into one of the empty rooms. The
sound of him slamming the door shut echoed throughout the hall.
"We've really got our work cut out for us here, huh?" I asked Kirigiri.
She was staring at the wall, the eyes in her pallid face not betraying what she was thinking any
more than they usually did.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
"Do you have a change of clothes?"
"I don't mind even if I have to wear these same clothes for a week."
"Well, I mean, you should probably mind a little..."
I'd thought something like this might happen, so I'd brought a change of clothes myself. After
seeing the photos of the Sirius Observatory in the magazine article, I'd thought maybe I would
be staying here during the interview process. And now it was looking like I was right.
Maybe part of the interview really is a test of endurance, just like Inuzuka said?
"What room do you want? We can stay together if you're scared," I asked.
Kirigiri seemed indecisive, looking between the two doors before finally pointing at one.
"Wow, what a coincidence! I was just thinking I might pick that one, too. Guess that's settled
then! We'll have to room together!" I said, but Kirigiri just frowned back at me. "Kidding, kidding!
That was just a joke. I'll take the leftover room."
Kirigiri silently turned her back to me and entered her room. Is she mad at me?
I, in turn, entered the fifth and final room. The sheets had been stripped off of the bed, and the
bathroom door had been left open. Inuzuka or Amino must have left the room like this after
investigating. I sighed, making the bed and then setting my bag on top of it. I glanced out the
window just to check, but all that I saw was a white darkness. No surprises there.
When is it gonna stop snowing already? If by any chance... the storm got worse by morning,
then maybe we would be staying here for more than just one or two nights. Suddenly anxious, I
looked in the fridge. Just like in the other one, there was only juice and beer. No food.
That one fact highlighted a staggeringly enormous problem. There was a high chance that there
was no food anywhere in the building. If we have to stay here for a few days because of the
snowstorm, won't we starve?
I checked in my bag. I had a chocolate pastry and a bag of candy that I'd brought to snack on.
Could I survive on just these and water for who knows how many days...? We might be in a way
worse situation than we think we are.
I sat on the bed, and took a moment to just put my head in my hands. My head felt a little
fuzzy—maybe because I'd come here in the snow without even an umbrella. If I was coming
down with a cold because of that, it would be no joke.
I stretched out onto the bed to stare at the ceiling. I took my phone out of my pocket to
check—No Service. I couldn't suppress my reaction to reading those words. A bunch of
detectives were trapped in a building in the snow, and my cellphone couldn't even get service?
The mystery client... Who exactly are they? When you get down to it, who would call us all here,
and why?
No matter how much I tried to think about it... my mind was just in a haze.
I went out into the hall to try and raise my spirits. Kirigiri was the only one there, standing as still
as a statue, facing the wall.
"So uh, what are you up to?" I asked, and Kirigiri turned to face me, looking like she wanted to
say something. There was a recessed cabinet embedded in the wall in front of her, the cabinet
door sitting open. "Oooh, did you find something?"
Inside the cabinet were rows of different strange switches. There was a panel that looked like it
had written instructions, but it was all in a foreign language. German or something? There was
one button that stood out from the rest of the controls. It was surrounded by a square that was
striped in black and yellow as a warning signal.
"C-Could this be... the self-destruct button...?"
"It's the switch to open and close the ceiling dome," said Kirigiri, in awe. "The instructions tell
you how to move the telescope, too."
"You can read German?"
"I'm not fluent; I only understand a little. It's only because I've been on numerous trips to
Germany."
That's a pretty big deal. I already had enough trouble with just the English exams at school.
"Let's try pressing it."
"Ah—"
I pushed the button without waiting for Kirigiri's permission. Out of nowhere, I heard the sound of
a motor running. I looked up at the ceiling, where a gap was opening up in the concave mirror. It
looked almost as if the mirror had been cracked. By no means was it a mirror world that I could
see through the gap... it was the dense ashen night sky.
All at once, snow began to blow in. The snow that had piled up on top of the roof fell down in
thuds, too. We were enveloped in freezing cold air.
"Whoa, cold—!" I frantically hit the button again. But the dome didn't stop. "W-Wait, how do we
get it to go back?"
"You have to raise that lever and then push the button again."
I did as I was told, and the dome gently closed. It took less than a minute for it to shut
completely, the last remaining snow fluttering down as it did.
"Hey! What was that noise just now?" Amino fearfully peeked out from behind his door.
"The ceiling opened."
"The ceiling?" Amino came out of his room to look up at it, before shooting me a look that
demanded to know what kind of nonsense I was up to.
"My, my, what a pleasant surprise to see you folks all here together." Inuzuka came out, too.
"Is something the matter, Inuzuka-sensei?"
"Nah, I tried, but I just don't do well with sittin' still. I was thinking I could do a little more
investigation around the building, but..."
"Didn't we investigate enough earlier?"
"I was gonna start over and test a hypothesis that there's some hidden door or passageway
somewhere."
"I sincerely doubt we'll find anything like that."
"These girls just found a switch to open up the ceiling not five minutes ago, didn't they? Anyway,
try using your head sometime. Even outside the fact that there's no sign of anyone going in or
out, the lights were already on in the building, and the front door was even open. Can't help but
feel someone's gotta be in the building somewhere."
Inuzuka had a point. I nodded in agreement.
"Let's all go through and do a thorough investigation. But we'll split into two teams. If we all
travel together, we're leaving an opening."
We called Enbi out from his room, too, interrupting his rest. For some reason, he was staggering
when he came out, looking like he might fall over. He held his head in his hands, leaning against
the table.
"Are you all right?" I asked, and he nodded silently.
It didn't take long for us to split into teams. I proclaimed I would team up with Kirigiri. She was
my underclassman, she was cute, she was a better detective than me, and most of all, she
would be the most endangered if I didn't keep an eye on her. She didn't object to the team-up.
"So I guess the three of us in the Middle-Aged Man Squad..."
Amino hurriedly interrupted Inuzuka mid-sentence. "I'll go with the girls. Look, don't you think
they should have an adult?" He shifted closer to me.
"Guess so. Then I'll leave them to you. I'll go with Enbi-kun."
We split up in the hall to begin our search.
"Time to get cracking, guys." Amino stood in front of us like he was the leader of the group.
We traveled through the underground passageway to Building B. As the entrance, Building B

had nothing but the stairs leading down to the passageway, devoid of any sort of decor. The
walls were almost entirely glass, so they probably couldn't install any sort of switch either.
"Hoo boy, I'll leave the investigation to the two of you, so just tell me when you're done." Amino
leaned against the handrail on the stairs, procuring a cigarette and a lighter from his suit pocket
and preparing to take a drag.
Oh, I see now. He teamed up with us so he could slack off. Adults play dirty.
There was a lot I could say about that, but I decided to ignore him and investigate the automatic
door again instead. There were traces of us coming and going left in the snow outside, but they
also already looked like they were in the process of being covered up by the snow. There wasn't
any sign of anyone sneaking in more recently.
There wasn't anything else to investigate in Building B, so we went right back down the
underground passageway.
"Should we lock the front door?" I hazarded asking our fearless leader. But Amino didn't seem
to care, so I trusted my own judgment and locked it anyway.
We inched down the hall as Kirigiri knocked on the walls and floor. I followed her lead and
started to do my own investigation of the underground passageway.
And yet, we made it to the Building A door without any luck. Kirigiri stood up from where she'd
been crouched down by the floor, brushing off her skirt and shaking her head blankly.
"Of course there's no hidden room," Amino said, pushing his cigarette into his portable ashtray.
"I feel like it's a different kind of crisis... More like, I dunno, something more..." He kept muttering
to himself as he climbed the stairs to the main building.
He abruptly stopped partway up, looking up at the ceiling in bewilderment.
"Shit, I feel kinda dizzy..."

We returned to the main hall; Inuzuka and Enbi were still searching through the guestrooms.
Specifically, they were looking in mine.
"Waahh! What are you doing, going in there without my permission?!" I challenged, flustered,
but they both kept looking in the shower and under the bed, unconcerned.
"Don't worry. No one's fishing through your bags."
They both emerged from the room after a bit more investigation. "No surprise, but no dice.
Judging by the shape of the building, the only place there'd be a hidden passage would be
through the floor, but there wasn't anything suspicious anywhere," Inuzuka concluded.
We gathered around the table, exhaustion on all of our faces, unsure how to start up any
different conversation. All of us had a laundry list of questions, but we knew there was no one
here who would answer them.
"So... the job was a sham from the start," Enbi offered. "We walked straight into an enemy trap.
Choose some random detectives from the Detective Library, write up a job offer that seems
appropriate, and gather them all in an empty building. There are criminals out there who just
want to see the looks on their victims' faces."
"A trap..." There was a complicated expression on Inuzuka's face. He had gone unnaturally
pale.
"If the proxy doesn't show up by daybreak tomorrow, I'm out," said Enbi, spreading his hands.
"Yeah... But who knows how many days this blizzard is gonna stick around. It might last all
week. What'll we do for food if that happens? We couldn't find any food reserves anywhere
around here."
"So... we'd better be careful about what we eat tonight..." Enbi put both hands on the table like
he was supporting his weight.
According to the analog clock, it was after 8:00. Normally, I'd be lazing around in the dorms after
dinner right around now.
"Maybe we should just rest up for now..." Inuzuka swayed as he backed away from the table.
Right after that, I heard something fall to the ground. I turned around to see Amino was no
longer where he had been standing. I made my way around the table to see him collapsed face
down.
What in the world...?
Something big was happening. But I couldn't make myself move, despite the state of
emergency. I couldn't think about what I should be doing. It was like a heavy blanket had been
draped over my thoughts. And then, another one was starting to be draped over my field of
vision.
No—that was smoke.
"Fire!" someone shouted.
Fire?
I have to run. I have to get out of here.
But my body felt heavy, and my consciousness was flickering in and out. I was swallowed up by
white smoke until it felt like even my body was dissolving into white smoke…
Chapter 4: Duel Noir 2
Detective Shelf Collection (DSC): Detective Library Classification
0 - All: All
1 - Religious Crime: Brainwashing, illegal doctrine, etc.
2 - Political Crime: Terrorism, domestic conflict, subversive activities, etc.
3 - White-Collar Crime: Counterfeiting, embezzlement, breach of trust, etc.
4 - Wildlife Crime: Environmental terrorism, poaching, illegal dumping, etc.
5 - Cybercrime: Unauthorized access, Internet fraud, etc.
6 - Public-Order Crime: Prostitution, gambling, etc.
7 - Art Crime: Art theft, art forgery, etc.
8 - Human Rights Abuses: Coercion, false imprisonment, kidnapping (restriction of personal
freedom), etc.
9 - Homicide: Felony murder, locked room murder, etc.
Eigo Amino (35): DSC 367 — White-Collar Crime, Corporate Espionage, Rank 7
Shiita Enbi (28): DSC 245 — Political Crime, Terrorism, Rank 5
Kou Inuzuka (41): DSC 943 — Homicide, Locked Room Murder, Rank 3
Kyouko Kirigiri (13): DSC 919 — Homicide, Impossible Crime, Rank 9
Yui Samidare (16): DSC 888 — Human Rights Abuses, Kidnapping, Rank 8
Chapter 5: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 3
"A game? This murder is a game? What do you mean by that?" I asked Kirigiri as she sat on the
armchair.
"There are still several things that need to be confirmed," she continued, without answering my
question. "It would be faster if I investigated myself, but... I don't suppose you would remove my
handcuffs, would you?"
"I can't do that," I said, firmly. If you asked me how I felt, I didn't think she was the culprit. Or, to
be more precise, I didn't want to think of her as the culprit. But from a logical perspective, no
matter how I thought about it, the culprit couldn't be anyone but her. As a detective, I couldn't go
against logic. "If something needs to be investigated, then I'll go be your eyes and arms and
legs instead. That should be fine, right?"
"...It's fine."
"What should I investigate first?"
"Investigate the luggage of the people who were killed. Bring Amino and Inuzuka's bags if you
can."
"Their bags, huh...?"
I went to Amino and Inuzuka's rooms as I was told, trying my best not to look at the bodies...
I set down Amino's briefcase and Inuzuka's carry-on next to each other in front of Kirigiri. The
carry-on bag was so unusually heavy that I had broken a light sweat on my forehead.
"Good?"
"Look inside Amino's briefcase."
I opened Amino's briefcase and searched the contents. Inside were two files with writing that I
couldn't really understand, one English conversation textbook, and then a handkerchief,
cigarettes, lighter, wallet, and so on. Lastly, there was a side pocket with a black envelope
inside.
"What's inside the envelope?" asked Kirigiri.
"The written request, right?" I said, checking the contents. "It's the same letter as the one they
sent to me. The only difference is who it's addressed to."
"Anything else?"
"Nope. Nothing."
"I see..." Kirigiri pressed her lips together, deep in thought. "We should still investigate the
others' bags, but for now, I'm willing to come to a conclusion."
"Hm? You figured something out?"
hallenge you received appears to have been sent to you

"The second request—rather, the c
alone."
"Challenge... You mean this?" The letter that started with "A Message for the Detective".
Not everyone got one of these?

"You didn't find one in Amino-san's luggage, did you? I didn't receive one, either," said Kirigiri. "I
believe that you have been chosen to serve as the detective in this incident."
"I'm serving as the detective—?"
"Yes," Kirigiri said bluntly, an expression beyond her years on her face. "As it indicates in the
letter. You were given advance warning regarding this incident in the challenge you received.
You are the detective asked to solve this case."
"W-Wait a minute. You mean if I had figured out earlier that this was supposed to be a
challenge, I could have stopped this before it even happened?"
"Perhaps so."
"N... No way! That's..."
I let murder happen right under my nose just because I didn't recognize the culprit's
provocation?
If I'd just been a little more sharp... If I'd just been a little more cautious... If I'd just been a little
more of a detective... then maybe I could have prevented this from happening. Maybe this
wouldn't have ended with three people dead. Three people—I had never met them before this,
but those were still three lives that I let be extinguished... Three detectives' lives, even. Three
people who had been working to right wrongs in the world...
My hands were shaking. It felt like I had killed them myself.
"Thinking along those lines, some sense can be made of this inexplicable situation we find
hy wasn't I killed?"
ourselves in currently. When I first awoke, my very first thought was—w
I felt those words were the clearest demonstration of what a warped human being this little girl
called Kyouko Kirigiri was. It was so easy for her to accept risking her life like it was a fact of
everyday life and not an extraordinary circumstance. She lived with the presence of death
constantly beside her. It even gave me a little chill just thinking about what might have
happened to her to make her that way.
"The culprit had countless opportunities to kill me, so why did they allow me to live? The reason:
I am serving as the culprit."
"So you are the—"

"Don't misunderstand. By no means is it anything more than a role I have been assigned. You
were given the part of the one who indicts the culprit, and I was given the part of the one who is
indicted. That is how things have been set up."
"So, basically... you're a dummy culprit prepared by the real culprit?"
"Yes."
"There's something fishy about that. I mean, there's something fishy about there being a
challenge at all. Like, what does the culprit have to gain from sending a letter announcing their
crime ahead of time? And you said I'm playing the detective? From the culprit's point of view, I
don't see why they'd ever need a detective."
"That's why I believe this is a game."
"That doesn't make any sense. You're saying killing people is a game?"
"Rather... it's a murder game wherein the culprit issues a challenge to the detective."
"That's..."
"That's the only thing I can think of, considering the existence of the written challenge and the
reasoning behind leaving the two of us alive."
"The culprit just wanted to see our reactions?"
"I wonder?"
"So basically, this is what you're trying to say. Right now, this whole situation, this is a real time
mystery game that the culprit set up as a challenge for me?"
"Yes."
"There's no way I'm gonna believe that! That's ridiculous!" I denied. "Why me? Out of sixty-five
thousand and five hundred detectives, why would they single me out?"
"Perhaps they wished to issue a challenge to all detectives—or, alternatively, the very concept
of private investigators." Kirigiri narrowed her eyes and shook her head, swishing her hair back
from her cheeks. She looked like she was prepared to face the culprit's challenge head on.
"Fine, I get it... For now, let's just pretend everything that's happening right now is a game to the
culprit... How am I supposed to solve the case? That still wouldn't change the fact that you're the
only suspect."
"I'm going to speak based solely on my own personal perspective, but... I am not the culprit, and
neither are you. Your hand feels completely different from the culprit's."
"And so?"
"The culprit is another person."
"I have already rigorously investigated that option. We're the only ones here."
"No; you still have some gaps in your investigation."
Is there anywhere I haven't investigated yet...?
We all confirmed that there were no hidden rooms or secret passages before we lost
consciousness. There were no traces of anyone exiting or entering the building in the
surrounding snow. The front door and all of the windows were locked from the inside. Even if,
hypothetically, someone were to have a copy of the key to the door, there still wasn't any trace
of anyone going through the automatic door, so I could safely say that no one had gone in or
out.
If, hypothetically—the culprit was someone other than Kirigiri, then where did they come from,
and where did they disappear to? They didn't fly out through the automatic door on a balloon,
did they? Maybe they shrunk to water bottle size so that they could hide in the fridge? Neither of
those could possibly be true.
"There is something I would like to confirm before anything else," Kirigiri opened her mouth
again to say. "Regarding the corpses, you told me about how they had all been decapitated.
However, 'Dismemberment' is what is written in the challenge."
"You don't mean..."
"Perhaps a more thorough investigation should be performed on the corpses."
Were their heads not the only part severed?
"If you remove my handcuffs, I will perform the investigation," said Kirigiri.
"No, you sit there. I'll investigate."
"Be thorough about it. How were they cut? I'm sure the corpses will tell us everything we need to
know."
"...Got it."
Or so I said... but there was no way I could investigate dismembered corpses and keep a level
head. Probably the only people who can do that are Number 9 detectives.
But I had to do it despite that. If it was true that I'd been slapped with a challenge, then I had to
stand up and face it.
I went to investigate the first corpse I had found—the one with Amino's head. By now, the
stench of blood was hanging in the air throughout the whole room, and I felt the bile rising in my
throat again. I covered my nose with my sleeve as I approached.
The blanket had been pulled back enough to expose the cut between the head and the torso. I
tried pulling back the blanket even further.
The torso looked like it belonged to Enbi. I remembered his black tank top. It had a muscular
physique, too, which led me to believe that it hadn't been just the clothes that were switched.
The arms had been severed at the shoulder, too. At a glance they had looked like they were
connected to the torso, but evidently, they'd just been positioned with the cut edges placed right
up next to each other. And that wasn't all—each arm was cut into three pieces. One section
was the upper arm, from the shoulder to the elbow; one was the lower arm, from the elbow to
the wrist; and one was the hand, from the wrist on.
They sure were dismembered, all right...
I took a step back, toppling down until I was sitting on the floor. There was no way I could be in
my right mind looking at something like that.
I suppressed the urge to scream, summoning my willpower to get back on my feet. If this
atrocious crime had really been committed as a challenge to a detective... then I absolutely had
to win. A detective has to fight for justice.
I grit my teeth and went back to surveying the corpse. Apparently, the different parts of the arm
had come from different people, too. The different sleeves and skintones were arranged in an
unmistakable eerie mismatch. If it hadn't been for the fact that the bodies had been cut up
wearing their clothes, I might not have been able to identify the owner of each part. The upper
arms were probably Amino's, the lower arms were Enbi's, and, through process of elimination,
the hands would be Inuzuka's. Each arm had its pieces lined up in place like some sort of
puzzle.
The horror show didn't stop there... Each leg had been cut into three pieces that had been
swapped out, too. The parts were arranged in the same order as the arms.
All in all, the corpse had been cut up into a total of fourteen pieces.
I put a hand over my mouth, unsteadily making my way back into the main hall. Sitting in the
armchair, Kirigiri looked cool and composed, as if she had already foreseen my reaction from
the beginning.
"It's just like you said..." I near-sobbed. "Why would this... If this really is a game, it's downright
insane..."
"What condition was the corpse in?" Apparently, Kirigiri cared more about dead bodies than she
cared about me.
I sank down onto the floor, explaining the corpse I had just seen.
"I see... It appears that this incident is even more cruel than I had assumed."
"Do you really think so?" I asked, peering up at her face. "What exactly is this...? Why would
they need to dismember people like this...?"
"If you refer to the challenge you received in the mail, Yui-oneesama, you can see that the
dismemberment is related to some sort of trick."
"A trick...?"
"That leads me to think that the corpses were cut into pieces for some specific reason."
"A reason for dismembering the corpses..."
"I can think of several possibilities, but most involve making them easier to carry."
"Carry...?"
Easier to carry the bodies to the beds, maybe? It was true that carrying the bodies of full-grown
men, each of whom weighed more than 60 kilograms, would be no easy task. But if they were
cut up into little pieces, then transport would be a breeze.
"Go investigate the other bodies," directed Kirigiri.
I had the strong desire to respond with, "You do it," but since I'd promised to investigate things
myself, I refrained.
I went into the next room to investigate the body there. The head was Enbi's, and the torso
looked like Inuzuka's. As expected, the body had been chopped up into 14 smaller pieces, and
both arms and legs had been arranged in the order of Enbi, then Inuzuka, then Amino from top
to bottom. What's more, the dog tag Enbi had had around his neck had fallen to the side of the
body. I picked it up to inspect it. All it had on it was his name, in the Roman alphabet.
Now that I'd looked at two of the mismatched corpses, there was no real need for me to force
myself through another disastrous scene to investigate the third. But there was nothing else to
do right now but see it for myself. I clung to the wall as I moved to the next room to investigate
the third body inside.
The head was Inuzuka's, and the torso was Amino's. Both arms and legs were, from the top
down, Inuzuka's, Amino's, and then Enbi's.
I'd succeeded in investigating all three bodies, but other than confirming the dismemberment, I
hadn't gleaned any new information. I didn't know how any of them had died. I couldn't perform
an autopsy well enough to determine their estimated time of death, either. Though, they didn't
look like they had been gushing out blood; the pool of blood mostly seemed to just be soiling the
sheets reddish-black, so maybe it safe to consider them as having been cut up after they were
already dead. It was probably safe to think of those pruning shears as the thing used to cut
them, too. Whether or not that was true, it was clear to see that the cutting had been done on
top of the beds. I found several places where the sheets had been damaged as proof.
I returned to the hall to give Kirigiri my report. My role had already switched from being the
detective to being the assistant to the armchair detective.
"I've grasped the situation," Kirigiri said calmly. It was more than a little unsettling to see her with
this much composure, despite being three years younger than I was. "There's just one more
thing I'd like to confirm," she said, making it sound like a demand.
"What is it this time, Little Miss Detective?"
"Press that switch." She turned towards one of the walls. The switch to open the dome was
there.
"Oh! That's right! I forgot to check that out!"
The roof. If the person who brought us here was a sixth person yet to be introduced, then after
they killed the three detectives, t hey might have opened the dome and escaped through the
roof. And they'd still be there, hiding on the roof even now.
I opened the cabinet on the wall and pushed the switch. With the whirr of a motor, the concave,
mirrored roof began to open. All at once, wind and snow blew in. It was even darker than it
should be for this time of night, but I could peer through the gap. Once it had opened enough, I
took my finger off the button.
"Can you investigate on top of the roof?" Kirigiri asked, shivering as she shook off the snow from
her head.
"Mmmm, it's pretty high," I said, crossing my arms.
But maybe I could make it, even if other people couldn't.
I dragged the round table over from the middle of the room and put it up next to the wall. Then, I
hopped up on the table, shoes and all, aimed for the opening in the dome—that is, the place
where the wall ordinarily met the ceiling—and jumped.
I made it!
It had been close; my fingers were just barely hanging onto the top of the wall. This was the
edge along which the dome slid open and closed, to the left and right. I pulled my body up, and
somehow managed to crawl up onto it.
"I'm surprised." Kirigiri sounded impressed. "That was an amazingly powerful jump."
"Heheh... These are my prized springing legs. I broke the vertical jump record for high school
girls." It was painful, but I finally managed to get myself up onto the roof's open edge. "But
unfortunately, my body's pretty weak overall, so I couldn't put these prized legs to work in any
sports. If I ever managed to compete with them somehow, then maybe I could have gone to
Hope's Peak... Haha, just kidding." I'd chosen the path of the detective. However prized they
may be, my legs had basically no impact on my detective skills.
But today, for the first time, they'd come in handy.
I strained my eyes through the snowy darkness to look around the area. But, unfortunately, I
couldn't see the culprit. I didn't even see any traces of anyone else crawling up onto the roof this
way. I just saw the snow piled up on the roof, making the shape of a white star in the darkness.
I sighed, my breath visible as a white cloud in the dark night, and jumped back down into the
room. I hit the button to close the dome.
"I guess there really isn't anyone else here but us," I said, wiping snow off my uniform.
"So it seems," Kirigiri said with a nod. "But what you did still helped, at least in the sense of
affirming that there is no one on the roof."
"Yeah, thank God for that," I said sarcastically. "If no one else is around, that makes you more
and more suspicious."
"You're still saying that?" Kirigiri asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Hasn't there been enough investigation by now? No one came in or out of the building except
us. Three out of the five of us are dead. It was either me or you who killed them."
"No, all you've done is establish the situation. You haven't reasoned enough to take that
situation to its logical conclusions yet," Kirigiri said, looking straight up at me. Her face was
simultaneously that of an innocent little middle school girl, and that of a detective who never
once lost the trail. "Let's sort through everything from the top, piece by piece. If we do that, then
I'm sure you'll see who the true culprit is, Onee-sama."
Kirigiri made herself comfy as she spoke, leaning back in the armchair.
"Wait a minute—you know who this true culprit or whatever is?"
"I wonder?" Kirigiri asked, a reserved, mysterious smile appearing on her lips. "Now, let us
continue the discussion, and recall what has happened since the start of this incident."
"From the start?"
"Yes—starting with the question of when you and the others were given the sleeping pills."
"Ohhh, now that you mention it! 'Fainting Drugs' is written on the challenge letter!"
"No, the sleeping pills and fainting drugs are two different things. I believe the fainting drugs
were what I inhaled from the handkerchief. But at some other time, you and the others
unwittingly consumed sleeping pills."
"When exactly was that? I was so careful, I didn't even touch anything that was in the fridge!"
"You drank a can of coffee in the van, didn't you?"
"Oh!" I suddenly cried out. "The can of coffee I got before we left the station! Are you trying to
say there were some slow-acting sleeping pills in there?"
"Yes. I cannot think of anything else."
"So that was it... Does that mean the driver is the culprit?"
"No, the driver went back down the mountain. I find it hard to believe he would come back
covertly to sneak into the building. You confirmed that no outsiders went in or out yourself, didn't
you?"
"I-I guess I did."
"The driver was acting under instructions from Yoshizono Ooe. Giving you that can of coffee
was part of those instructions."
"So the murder plot had already started by then... I was too careless."
If only I had noticed back then, then maybe I could have stopped it from happening! I bit my lip.
"I believe the sleeping pills were portioned out such that they would take effect once we had
reached the building. Though I don't know why they weren't mentioned in the challenge letter
with the rest..."
"You don't think they were all lumped together under fainting drugs?"
"I wonder?" Kirigiri cast her eyes downward, pensive. "In any case, all of us temporarily lost
consciousness. It can be assumed that the dismemberment took place during that period of
time."
No doubt the murder proceeded as intended. Under those circumstances, there had to be some
meaning behind the fact that Kirigiri and I weren't killed. According to Kirigiri, that reason was
apparently so that I could play the detective and she could play the culprit, but...
"After arriving here, we carried out a careful investigation of the indoors," Kirigiri said, looking
around at it. "As a result, we learned that there was no one else here but us—not even
Ryuuichirou Kiba or Yoshizono Ooe."
"Mm-hmm."
"Then, after we regained consciousness, we investigated inside the building again, once again
concluding that there was no outsider present. There is no trace of anyone exiting or entering.
Do you have confidence in this testimony, Yui-oneesama?"
"Of course. That was the conclusion of a careful investigation."
"The five of us were the only ones in the building."
"Right. No doubt about it." I nodded emphatically.
"The culprit arranged this situation so that you would make an error in your reasoning. There's
no doubt about that much. It's inevitable that you would indict me as the culprit, isn't it?"
"I... can't think of anyone else."
"I see. Then, allow me to refute that assumption," said Kirigiri, attempting to sound mature. "I am
not the culprit. The culprit is someone other than you or me."
"A culprit other than us... But you agreed that it was only the five of us in here, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"But you're still saying that the culprit is someone else?"
"Yes."
"You don't mean—the culprit is one of the three dead people?

"
"I do."
"Th-That's unthinkable! It's impossible, no matter how you think about it. Weren't they all
dismembered? They couldn't possibly be playing dead. Or do you mean one of them committed
suicide? That possibility disappeared when they had all their severed body parts rearranged.
Someone other than the three dead people had to be there to rearrange the parts like some
twisted puzzle."
"Yes. The question is, who?"
"I-It wasn't me!"
"I know. You should first consider the mystery of the dismembered corpses. Why were they
severed into fourteen distinct parts? And then, why were those parts switched?"
"How could I possibly understand something like that? Whatever the answer is, doesn't it boil
down to some freak getting off on something messed up? Or are you saying that there's some
logical reason behind dismembering them and reorganizing the parts?"
"Yes, there is."
"No way! It just doesn't make sense!"
"No, you'll soon understand if you consider it with a level head."
"Levelheaded... Levelheaded..."
I'm pretty sure Kirigiri said that bodies are dismembered to make them easier to carry. Maybe
that applies in this case, too?
...Carry them? But—from where to where?
Suddenly, I was struck by an idea.
"There's one simple answer that can resolve all these mysteries, isn't there?" Kirigiri asked.
If the culprit was one of the dead people—if he wasn't playing dead, and didn't commit
suicide—he prepared a dead body double!
How would he get a dead body double? He would have had to have carried it in from the
outside. How? By cutting the body into pieces, of course.
"Are you saying that someone brought a sixth person into the building as their body double,
already in pieces?"
"I can't think of any other option."

"But... that couldn't be it... I mean, I saw all of the corpses' faces, right? The three dead people
were the three detectives I met today, without a doubt. The people who died were Amino-san,
Enbi-san, and Inuzuka-san..."
"I'm saying that one of those people was a fake. The culprit killed one of the detectives in
advance and dismembered him. Then, he appeared before us, looking like the spitting image of
that detective..."
"A fake...?! There's just no way for that to be possible, is there? I mean, didn't everyone show us
photo ID? It shouldn't be possible to impersonate someone else that perfectly unless it's a
detective who's a master of disguise. Or are you saying that the culprit was actually a detective,
too? But if he has to be skilled at disguise on top of that, that logic relies on things being very
convenient."
ll he had to do was
"No, that's incorrect. This impersonation was much more simple than that. A
travel to the Detective Library and select a detective who looked just like himself."
"Oh... Right! He could manage it if it was a detective who already looked like him from the start!"
There are over 64,000 detectives registered in the Detective Library. It might not be difficult to
find at least one of them who looks a whole lot like you.
The culprit killed that detective in advance. Then, he stole his Detective Library registration card,
and acted like he was that person in front of us... Then, on top of that, he dismembered the
body and brought it here in a way we wouldn't notice. An uninvited sixth guest was with us the
whole time.
"But... even if it makes sense that the culprit dismembered the body to carry it... why would he
arrange the body parts the way he did? I can barely imagine any kind of reason there might be
for that."
"No, the culprit had a pressing reason for doing so."
"A pressing reason...?"
"First of all—dismembering the bodies makes them more compact. You've already surmised as
much, haven't you? More or less?"
"...Right."
"Secondly, there is the issue of livor mortis. When a person dies, their blood no longer circulates
throughout their body, and thus, it slowly settles down on one side of the body in accordance
with gravity. As the blood collects, the surface of the skin begins to look speckled or even
halftone. Livor mortis becomes more visually prominent the more time passes."
"Yeah, even I know that."
But I never thought I would get a detailed explanation of it from a middle schooler. That Number
9 of hers wasn't just for show. This kind of talk made me want to throw up, but she continued
with a calm expression.
"The culprit killed one detective in advance to be his body double. Naturally, this happened
before we were even gathered here. Therefore, that one corpse was significantly older than the
others. If the culprit were to use that corpse as his body double without thinking, the livor mortis
might betray that gap in the estimated times of death. Instead, the culprit drained the blood
from the body. That task might have been easier to accomplish while the corpse was
dismembered."
"If there's no blood in the body, livor mortis won't set in?"
"Yes. In this way, livor mortis is unlikely to appear. Yet, as a result, a different problem arises:
the bloodstains at the crime scenes. There would not be enough blood to make it appear as if
the body had been killed where it was found."
"You think maybe he prepared one of those blood packs for transfusions?" I piped up with a
sudden thought. "Or maybe he saved the blood after he drained it, so he could use it later..." I
was making myself feel gross with my own suggestions. I felt myself growing faint, and clenched
my teeth to keep myself grounded.
"No, that wouldn't have been necessary. There was a supply here of the blood he needed."
"Supply...?"
The other victims?
"In any case, the culprit was planning on preparing three bodies. One in advance, and two
within the building. Naturally, he had to dismember the ones killed here, too. It would be strange
if only his substitute were in pieces."
"I see... He had to dismember the others too, so that he didn't expose which one was the
substitute... I get that part, but why did he need to switch the parts around?"
"If he set the substitute on the bed without rearranging the parts, an unnatural situation would
occur. That would be, as I previously referenced, the issue of the bloodstain. The substitute
corpse, and only the substitute corpse, would clearly have bled less. The sheets would not be
messy. It wouldn't at all look like he had been killed there."
"Ohhhhhh... So, because he mixed in parts from the bodies that actually had been killed
there, he made it look like all three of them had been killed right there on the beds!"
"Yes. Once he did that, the blood seeping from the raw edges stained the sheets and eliminated
the unnatural quality. I do believe that the culprit performed the dismemberment on all three
beds. It would help make it more realistic that they had all been dismembered here."
"Yeah, it would... There were nicks in the sheets. I didn't even suspect." And maybe the severed
edges were pressed up against each other to hide the fact that there were parts mixed in there
that weren't bloody themselves.
"So? Have you managed to grasp the trick behind the dismembered corpses, Yui-oneesama?"
"Yeah... Somehow..." I nodded weakly. "From all of the evidence, and from what you've said...
First, the culprit dismembered the corpse that he would use as his substitute, in order to
transport it. In order to hide how that one had been killed a while before this incident, he drained
the blood to avoid livor mortis. Then, after all of us fell unconscious here in the Sirius
Observatory, he killed the other two detectives and dismembered them. After that, to make sure
we wouldn't discover that one of them was a substitute, he switched the parts around to resolve
the issue of its unnatural appearance."
I peered down at Kirigiri as if to ask, is that good enough? She gave a small nod in response.
"But we're still missing something crucial here. Where is the culprit?" I looked around. Was the
culprit holding his breath and listening in on our reasoning even now?
"There were no signs of anyone entering or leaving the building—therefore, the culprit is still
inside with us." Kirigiri sat up from against the backrest, her posture becoming slightly more
vigilant.
"Haven't we searched all over the building already? There was no culprit anywhere. I even
searched on top of the roof..."
"If we consider where the culprit hid the body, it will naturally lead to our answer. The culprit took
the body out of there, so it should have become empty. And now, the culprit himself must be
hiding there. Right? I needn't say any more for you to understand, correct?"
Where the culprit hid the body—

How did the culprit bring the body here into Sirius Observatory...? Right, the culprit cut the
substitute corpse up into smaller pieces and stored it in his bag. I just need to remember who
had what bag.
Amino had had a briefcase—the kind a salaryman might have. Enbi had had a small Boston
bag. And Inuzuka... had had a large roller bag. I'd brought it out from Inuzuka's room into the
hall earlier on Kirigiri's orders. I remembered it being awfully heavy.
If the body had originally been inside of this roller bag... then the owner of the bag would be the
culprit. The culprit is Kou Inuzuka!
Or, no, more accurately, I guess it would be "someone disguised as Inuzuka". He stuffed his
body double in the carry-on bag, pretended to be Inuzuka himself, and acted innocent as he
came with us together to the Sirius Observatory. If I think about it, then maybe his observations
that he pretended were so insightful were actually just the result of his own prior research.
And then, once he was done setting up the body parts, he hid inside of his own bag.
"I get it now, Kirigiri-chan. I'm sorry I was so suspicious of you. You didn't deserve all that."
"Have I finally been cleared of suspicion?"
"Yeah—the culprit's right here."
I backed off a little, so that I could get a running start.
"The culprit is you! Inuzuka!"
I gave the bag a dropkick, spectacularly sending it flying. I immediately followed up with the final
blow, jumping on top of the overturned bag.
Then, I put my hand on the closed zipper—
—and opened it.
And then from inside, Inuzuka—
—did not appear.
The bag was stuffed full of whiskey, vodka, and other various bottles of liquor.
"...Huh?"
What the heck? Wasn't the culprit supposed to be lying in wait...?
"What are you doing, Onee-sama?" Kirigiri watched me, wide-eyed.
"No, well, I mean... Didn't the culprit dismember the body double and bring him here? So if you
think about it, shouldn't the person with the biggest bag obviously be the culprit? Inuzuka, right?
I mean, the other two definitely couldn't fit a whole body in their bags..."
Uh? What's going on?
I couldn't think of any way that a body could be transported in a briefcase or an overnight
Boston bag. I thought the carry-on bag was the sure winner, but there was nothing but alcohol
inside. Actually, thinking back, I think even Inuzuka himself said that that was what was inside
there.
Which means... No one brought the body?
I automatically turned to Kyouko Kirigiri with suspicion.
What if all of her reasoning up until now was just a lie to try and deceive me?
"Don't tell me you still think I'm the culprit," Kirigiri said, seeing right through me.
"Well... wasn't your reasoning all just nonsense?! They dismembered the body to carry it? Who
did, and how? If you're going to bring a whole body, you'd need a bag as big as this carry-on
bag at the very least, right? But it turns out it was just alcohol in here. Nobody brought a body."
"My reasoning is not nonsense," Kirigiri said unflinchingly. "First of all, look at the bag and think
about it. Even if it would be possible to fit a dismembered corpse inside, do you think someone
as large as Inuzuka-san would be able to fit?"
"...Ooh. Yeah, that wasn't actually going to happen."
"I believe those bottles of alcohol really were what Inuzuka-san brought with him."
"Then who brought the body double's corpse here, and how did they do it?"
"I believe the culprit simply drove it here."
"Whaa?"
"I f it were even just earlier in the day, when the snow had not yet accumulated, driving
here would have sufficed."
"Oh... I completely overlooked that."
"Perhaps the victim intended to be the body double was summoned for an earlier time. Then, he
was killed and dismembered. However, I believe he was killed elsewhere. After all, there would
be the possibility that traces of evidence would be left if a murder had been committed here
beforehand. If that were the case, then perhaps one of us detectives would have noticed them."
"I see... But isn't there a hole in the theory that the culprit brought the body here before we
arrived? As soon as we got here, we went around investigating just in case. There wasn't a
body anywhere then, was there?"
"The body was very skillfully hidden."
"Hidden... Hidden where? I mean we scoured the whole place and there wasn't any body... Was
it buried in the snow outside? There would be traces of that."
"The answer is simple," said Kirigiri shortly, before continuing, "However—before we discuss the
truth, I would like to ask you a favor." She looked up at me.
"What?"
"I want you to believe that I am not the culprit." Her expression was unusually serious. And, for
the first time, it looked almost pleading.
Well, I mean... I do want to believe her, but... What if this is all one big lie of hers? What if I'm
the last person she needs to kill to round out her crime? I can't believe her just out of sympathy
alone.
But as she'd been cutting away all this confusion with her logical reasoning, I'd already begun to
half-believe her. She had talent as a detective.
"If you can trust me, then untie the ribbon on my right hand. Just the right is fine."
What exactly is she planning on doing? I have no idea.
But I'll believe in her, as a detective.
—I untied the restraints on her right hand.
"Thank you."
For the first time, she flashed me an endearing smile—or it felt like it, at least. Her expression
had barely changed, so maybe it was just me imagining things.
"Now, go get Amino-san's briefcase," Kirigiri requested. I did as I was told, picking up the
document case from the floor and handing it over to her. She set it on her lap. "Now bring
Inuzuka-san's carry-on bag over here."
"Got it." I grabbed the kicked-over carry-on bag and rolled it up in front of the armchair. "This
okay, Little Miss Detective?"
"Yes. Perfect." It looked like I'd made her blush just a little.
"So at the time that we all got here, was the body actually hidden here somewhere?"
"Yes. Thinking back, there are places that no one investigated. It's not impossible. At that time,
the thought of a dismembered corpse hadn't even crossed our minds."
Not quite—I had gotten the challenge, so I could have predicted it. I felt a wave of regret wash
over me as I realized that.
"So where exactly was that?"
"I nside the telescopes."
"Huh?! ...Inside... the telescopes?"
"Each of the five rooms had a 200mm aperture Newtonian reflecting telescope installed inside. If
you understand how those are constructed, you should be able to see where the body was
hidden."
"No way! That's impossible. There's no way you could put a body in those telescopes. Even if
you could, we'd have found it right away. I mean, if someone looked in the telescope, they'd see
right through the middle..."
Suddenly, I remembered Inuzuka's lecture on reflecting telescopes. Inside the large tube,
there's a concave mirror that reflects the image until it hits the objective lens.
"Oh my God! No way!"
What if someone had adjusted the concave mirror in the telescope beforehand? Couldn't they
create a hidden compartment inside the tube?
"Do you understand now? A human head could fit inside a tube with a 200mm diameter. A
man's head is 16cm wide at most. With the four limbs cut into three pieces each, I imagine they
could also be stowed without taking up too much space across. The head, the left arm, the right
arm, the left leg, and the right leg—the culprit took these five body parts and distributed them
between the five hidden compartments within the telescopes."
"There were... bodies inside of those... But I even looked through one of the lenses."
"You shouldn't have gotten a clear image. With the concave mirror repositioned, it should have
been out of focus."
"Yeah, I could barely see anything."
"Perhaps someone who was very knowledgeable about telescopes would notice the concave
mirror was strangely positioned when they looked inside the tube. But there wasn't anyone
among us who would notice that."
Inuzuka seemed to have known a decent amount, but he didn't notice that key fact. Maybe he
was working off memories that were too old, or maybe he just didn't have his head in the case.
"You didn't notice, Kirigiri-chan?"
"No. I only quickly glanced in the lens when I first came into the room. I thought it was probably
just that the lenses hadn't been adjusted properly."
"Your—you know, that ability of yours, it wasn't working?"

"I only hear the reaper's footsteps when danger is imminent."
"So I guess it wouldn't work on someone who's already dead." I sighed deeply. "Wait, huh? But,
what about the torso? Where'd they hide that last part? You know, the biggest one? There aren't
any more telescopes besides those five..."
"There is a certain location where the torso was hidden—and that is where the culprit is hiding
now."
"What?! The culprit?"
"Yes."
"But I really don't think there's anywhere left for them to hide..."
"No, there's still somewhere else," said Kirigiri, sounding faintly amused. "But consider this. This
space is a small area that can just barely fit someone's torso. For someone to be able to hide in
there after removing the body part, they must be someone very short..."
"I guess you're right. But there wasn't anyone that short that came along with us. You were the
shortest one."
"No. In fact, there was someone even shorter than myself."
"No there wasn't."
"I saw it clearly with my own two eyes."
"So who exactly were you looking at? Or, better question—where are they hiding now? It'll be
obvious who it is once I drag them out of there. Hurry up and tell me."
"Right... Understood," said Kirigiri, extending her right hand and taking a bottle out of Inuzuka's
bag. She opened it, and then, for some incomprehensible reason, started pouring it out onto her
skirt, around her thighs. The strong smell of alcohol permeated the air immediately.
"W-Wait, what are you doing!?"
Her lower body was soaked with alcohol.
Next, she took out the lighter from Amino's briefcase.
"Kirigiri-chan!"
"This vodka is 96% alcohol by volume. I believe simply soaking fabric with it, as I have done,
would allow it to very easily catch fire." Kirigiri held the lighter in her right hand, expressionless.
In my eyes, this was nothing short of insanity. "What are you thinking?!"
"I'm starting a fire."
"Stop it! What reason could you possibly have to..."
If she flicked on the lighter, then the vaporized alcohol might ignite. If that happened, her
alcohol-soaked clothes would probably instantly go up in flames. That wouldn't just leave her
with a few burns. She might just burn to death...
I didn't have the faintest idea why she would do something like that.
"I'm dead serious. Indicting the culprit means putting your life on the line. That's what
Grandfather taught me."
"Kirigiri-chan, what are you saying?! Stop it!"
"And I have the resolve to sacrifice my own life in pursuit of the truth," she said, her voice cold
enough to send a shiver down my spine. In that moment—her eyes had already lost color, as if
she were staring down death itself.
She placed her thumb on the wheel of the lighter.
"Stop!"
"I will start a fire in five seconds."
Five... Four...
I approached her. All I could do now was kick her arm and try to send the lighter flying.
Three...
"Onee-sama, watch quietly." She barred me from coming any closer.
Two...
I stopped without even thinking.

One...
"I give up."
Suddenly, I heard a man's voice, seemingly out of nowhere. I turned this way and that, looking
in all directions. No one was there.
"Your reasoning was spot-on. It's my loss. Pretty sure I can't talk my way out of this one
anymore."
Whose voice is that?
"Then get out of there, Enbi-san," said Kirigiri, standing up and facing the chair, her left hand
still handcuffed to it.
No way... Inside that little armchair?
Finally something began to stir, moving the chair... The back cushion became unfastened, and
out came the tank-top-clad figure of Enbi—Enbi's impostor.
How could that adult male body fit inside such a small armchair...? Was there a portal to another
dimension behind that cushion? I had real suspicions, but then I got a good look at him... His
legs cut off partway through the thighs. The rest of them just wasn't there.
"I lost both my legs in a fire a while back. They still hurt, even now."
Chapter 6: Duel Noir 3
I could understand what was happening before my very eyes, but I needed plenty of time to
process it.
The man crawling across the floor was the Enbi I'd met? I knew the real Enbi had been killed
and dismembered, but the man there before me was the spitting image of him.
"What does this mean?"

"It's exactly as it appears, Onee-sama. This man is the true culprit," said Kirigiri, lighter at the
ready.
The man crawling across the floor had a small knife in his right hand. But it would probably be
pretty difficult for him to wield it as a weapon, when he was missing both his legs.
"When did you first realize?" asked the man, raising his head to face Kirigiri.
"That your legs were prosthetic?" Kirigiri asked in return, tilting her head. "I first noticed when
you stepped out of the van. But it took quite a while before I realized that information was
connected to the case."
"Your legs were... prosthetic?" I timidly asked the man on the floor. He nodded. Now that I
thought about it, Enbi had definitely been dragging his legs along. I had just assumed that that
was due to an old injury.
"I took the legs off and hid them in the telescope in that room over there. I'd appreciate it if you
brought those over here, but... that's probably a no-go." He smiled wryly.
"Who exactly... are you?"
"Tadashi Asakura, the unluckiest underdog in the world."
I'd never heard that name before. But he looked like Shiita Enbi. He wasn't wearing his
sunglasses, but it was undoubtedly the same face.
"Um... Did you kill those three people, Asakura-san?"
"I did. But... I screwed the whole thing up." There was a refreshing smile on Asakura's face.
Maybe everyone has an expression like that when they finally give up on everything. "The
story's like the girl told it. I called myself Yoshizono Ooe and sent a job offer to five detectives.
That was both to draw you out and to camouflage the written challenge that was also sent out.
Incidentally, I sent a letter out to the real Shiita Enbi, too. I just put a meeting time that was a
little earlier in his letter."
"You called Enbi out first, killed him, and then dismembered him?" I asked.
"That's right. I hid Enbi's body in the telescopes and in the chair. Well, I was constantly aware of
the possibility that I could be found out at any time, so I took as many precautions as I could to
avoid that. For example, when I was investigating the rooms with Inuzuka, I tried my best not to
let him touch the telescopes. It was because I was there with all of you, as Enbi, that I could
manage some deflection away from the corpse. I thought it was a pretty good trick."
True—none of us had realized that there was someone else besides the five of us in the
building, dead man or no.
"Aah... So, my new life and 120 million yen vanished overnight?" Asakura said, as if calling out
to the heavens.
—What is he talking about?
"I never thought I'd be shown up by a brand new middle school detective. I tried to pick a
completely useless detective to play the culprit... Who would have thought that she would
expose the real truth?"
Kyouko Kirigiri—she really did expose everything.
"When exactly did you realize that you were sitting right on top of the culprit's hiding spot?" I
asked.
"I'd considered it as one of the options from the beginning."
"From the beginning?" Asakura was the one most surprised by that. "I didn't move even a
millimeter from where I was, and I even regulated my breathing so it shouldn't have been
overheard."
"Yes, you performed perfectly in that respect. I didn't sense a single thing from you. But,
logically, the probability that the culprit was hiding in the chair was very high."
"I don't know where you would even start with that kinda logic..."
"Consider Yui-oneesama's handcuffs."
"Handcuffs?"
"Why did the culprit put handcuffs on her in a way that made them so easily removable? And
why did the culprit make it so that I was holding the key?"
"Well, obviously he wanted me to suspect you, right?"
"That was a factor, of course, but there was another important reason. He wanted you to
restrain me to the armchair using those handcuffs. When you believed I was the culprit, your
first thought was to ensure your own safety by restraining me, correct? You tried to think of a
way to use the handcuffs. Since you had just been restrained to the bed with them, you thought
of securing the handcuffs to something else. The only things nearby were the table and the
armchair. If you cuffed me to a table leg, I could lift the table and free myself. Therefore, the
armchair was the only option."
y having you sit in the chair, he made it so I wouldn't consider it in the list of the
"I see... B
culprit's potential hiding spots—"
"Precisely."
"If you knew from the beginning, you should have said something earlier!"
"As I said before, at first it was just one possibility. Therefore, I had you go and eliminate the
other possibilities."
"I see... But if I'd just investigated inside the chair first, then it would have been over, right?"
"That may have ended terribly." Kirigiri shot Asakura a cold, sidelong glance. When I noticed the
knife in Asakura's hand all over again, I went pale.
Was... Asakura's knife pointed at Kirigiri's back the whole time? In a way she wouldn't notice, of
course. If things stopped going his way, he was prepared to backstab her—
But Kirigiri had had a hunch that that would happen. Or, no, maybe I should say it more like she
would: she "logically determined" it. Or maybe she "heard the reaper's footsteps". She probably
poured the alcohol on herself while she was still sitting in the chair because she didn't want to
make any sudden movements with the knife there. Or maybe that was just her way of showing
her own resolve? Probably both.
They had been waging psychological warfare against each other without my even noticing.
While I was busy being clueless, I was shifting the burden of bracing for such a terrible thing
onto Kirigiri.
"Um... How should I say this...? I'm really sorry, Kirigiri-chan."
"You can save that for later, Onee-sama. First and foremost, could you unfasten these
handcuffs?"
"Oh, right."
I quickly unlocked the handcuffs that had been connecting Kirigiri's left hand to the armchair.
She backed away from the chair, tending to her newly free wrist.
"Why in the world did you do something like this?" I asked Asakura, my voice trembling. "Was
challenging me to a mystery game really enough all on its own to...?"
"You're wrong," Asakura interrupted. "I never wanted any game." He sounded as if he might
continue, but he suddenly fell silent. It was the kind of silence you get when someone swallows
down what they want to say.
"So that's how it is after all," Kirigiri muttered, brushing the hair out of her face, apparently
having noticed something.
"What? What's how it is?"
"Asakura-san isn't the Game Master, but merely another player... is what I meant."
"Huh? There's someone else who set up this game? Who, exactly? The true true culprit? Are
they one of the dead people?"
Don't tell me there's another body double?
Asakura slowly shook his head, and began to speak. "I don't really know who the people who
set up the game are, either. I just went along with it. It just so happened that they'd prepared
something that I was willing to risk my life to get my hands on..."
"You have the obligation to explain to us what you know." Kirigiri boldly approached Asakura.
"Surely these games have been happening in secret in many more places than this. And they
will continue after this as well. We need you to lend your assistance, so that no one else is
victimized the way you have been."
Assistance? Victimized?
I barely knew up from down anymore.
"Yui-oneesama, on the challenge letter you received, there were numbers listed next to each
item on the list, correct?" Kirigiri turned to me with her explanation. "Those were surely
indicating their cost."
"Cost?"
"To put it simply—t he cost of the tricks. Asakura-san bought the locations, the weapons, and
the tricks that he needed to pull off this incident from the Game Master."
"Wha—he what?"
"I started with nothing, so to me, those were my weapons to fight against the detective,"
Asakura offered. "In an RPG, the hero goes to buy weapons and armor at the shop to make
himself strong enough to beat the boss, right? So basically, I bought an impossible crime from
those people with real life money, to beat the detective."
Someone was selling all the murders and dismemberment that happened here at the Sirius
Observatory? I can't believe—why would Asakura go along with this game in the first place?
Would there have been some kind of prize if he won against the detective?
"Heh..." Asakura stared down at the ground and let out a short huff before raising his head. "It's
all over for me anyway. Sure, I'll tell you everything. It's not a bad idea—wiping the smiles off the
faces of those voyeurs watching us. Messing with my life like that... I hope you're all shaking in
your boots right now, you pieces of shit!"
Asakura raised his middle finger on the hand holding the knife, threatening the empty air. I
followed his gaze, but of course, there wasn't anyone on the other end of it.
"First of all... Right, I guess I should talk about how this happened to my legs. I don't have much
time. I'll make this brief, so listen up. You guys have to make yourselves a threat to those
people. Or, no, maybe I should say—a hope for victims like me..."
Asakura started telling us about his past, and the serial arson case he experienced. Apparently,
as a victim, his legs had been burned so badly that the only option was to amputate. The prime
suspect in the case committed suicide, and so the case was settled with that. But one day, a
mysterious old man appeared before him. The old man came to whisper in his ear, saying he
would tell him the true culprit.
"The bastard who stole my family from me and left me in this wretched state was out there living
scot-free, without a care in the world. You think I could just let that slide? Of course not. I did
what anyone would have done."
The old man told Asakura he would reveal the true culprit, on one condition. That condition was
this murder case.
"Those people probably go around finding people like me, with the coals of revenge all ready to
burn inside of them, and they instigate us to murder. The whole thing's a big show, sponsored
by the filthy rich."
"Do things like that... really actually happen?"
"All the proof you need is in what you experienced from yesterday up until today."
"Who are 'those people' you refer to?" Kirigiri asked.

"The old man said he was from the Victims' Catharsis Committee. He went on and on about
catharsis like it's their slogan or something, but really the whole thing's just to entertain some
sickos I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Of course... I knew all that when I started this game.
I think they called the game itself a Duel Noir. Apparently they've done countless of these."
"If you knew all of that... then why did you choose to have this blood on your hands? There must
have been some better way..." I trembled as I spoke.
"Spare me the concern trolling. At the very least, I really could sense catharsis in what they
were saying. The chance to start my life over again..."
Asakura summarized the Duel Noir—all of it, without hiding anything from us. Once the letter of
challenge was opened, I had been given 168 hours to indict the culprit. If I had failed, he would
have received all the money indicated that was used to buy the tricks and so on, and on top of
that, he'd be given the privilege to start a new life as a different person.
It was unfortunate that his experiment had failed, but... he was a murderer now. In the end, he
wasn't any better than the person he had resented for so long. The futility of it all was almost too
much.
"It's over!" Asakura shouted at the air, out of nowhere.
Who has he been talking to this whole time?
"It's Game Over. Hurry up and call the police here already! You're watching, aren't you?"
"Who exactly are you talking to?"
"Those bastards watching us."
"Watching...?"
"Didn't I say? The Duel Noir is broadcasted as a show. I dunno if it's a live broadcast or not, but
at the very least there should be someone watching us on the other side of a monitor
somewhere."
"No way... There are security cameras somewhere?" I glanced around in shock. There didn't
seem to be anything camera-like anywhere.
"Yeah, they've gotta have tons of cameras with microscopic lenses set up somewhere. I
scoured the place looking for them myself, but I couldn't find a single one."
We're being watched, this very instant...

I wrapped my arms around myself to stave off the sudden chill I felt.
"Incidentally..." Kirigiri continued the conversation, expression as cold as ever. "Upon whom
were you exacting your revenge?"
"Inuzuka."
"I-Inuzuka-san?" I repeated.
"That guy... That piece of shit was the true culprit behind the serial arson case."
"But... isn't he a detective?" Not to mention, he was a Class 3 detective. Detectives don't just
rise that high in the ranks every day. Wasn't that proof in itself that he was proactively cracking
cases and fighting crime?
A detective like that wouldn't just...
"What, you think detectives can't commit crimes? You think detectives are all knights in shining
armor and saints? Well, let today be the last day you ever think that. He's a goddamn fuckface.
ommitted crimes, over and over, so that he could solve them and make a
That bastard... c
name for himself as a detective. He's personally sustaining his own detective business."
"That can't be true..." It felt like everything I'd believed in up until that point was crashing down
around me. Weren't detectives there to protect the weak? It shook me down to the very
foundation of my identity.
Aren't detectives... heroes?
"Guess he really needed to pull some shit to rise in the ranks after the DSC showed up on the
scene. Though really, it's a disgrace that he managed to make it all the way up to Rank 3. The
world should be giving me a round of applause for this. I condemned evil to its grave. The world
is better off... with Inuzuka dead."
"But... but..." I couldn't find the words past that.
"Why did you kill Amino-san and Enbi-san?" Kirigiri asked.
"Enbi looked like me, so I used him as a body double, just like you thought. Amino... Well, I
thought I could use one more person for the dismemberment trick, so I picked him at random.
Incidentally—you, young lady, I picked because you were the newest member. I had thought a
newbie who didn't know left from right would play the role of the pitiful criminal just as planned."
"Hmmm, I see." Kirigiri crossed her arms and turned away, moving closer to the wall.
"In the end... even if I lost, I still got my revenge. I'm grateful to the Committee in that sense.
Maybe these past few days have at least saved me. I got revenge, and fulfilled my life's
purpose. It's a refreshing ending. But—it's about time for that to be over, too."
Just then, I heard sirens from outside, signalling to us that it was time to draw the case to a
close.
"Did the people on the other side of the monitor call the police?" I swiveled my head towards the
noise.
"The end is nigh." Asakura tossed aside the knife in his hand. "But, damn, I really panicked
when I thought I might get set on fire. There I was, sitting there in the chair with a knife the
whole time so I could shut the girl up when I needed to. I thought, if I'm found out, I'll take her
down with me—I'll kill her even if I get a Game Over. But I never would have thought I'd be lured
out of the armchair that way. I don't think she even knew I was afraid of fire... That was
reckless..." He gave a pained smile towards Kirigiri, behind her back.
Maybe her determination broke Asakura's heart. No doubt, Asakura had assumed that I would
indict Kirigiri as the culprit, and that would be the end of it. And in practice, I did suspect her. If
she had made one wrong move, I might have even laid a hand on her. If that had happened,
then I would never have indicted the true culprit, "Enbi" a.k.a. Asakura, and the 168 hours would
have passed with his victory. Or else—in the worst case scenario, Kirigiri and I would have
taken each other out, and then it really would have been And Then There Were None.
Thinking about it that way—Kyouko Kirigiri had saved me. Such a small detective solved such a
big case. She had already proven her talent with no room for doubt. She had the power to fight
back against crime. She was the detective that could be the real knight in shining armor.
Kyouko Kirigiri was becoming more and more intriguing to me.
The sirens finally stopped outside the building, and the police bustled into the hall en masse.
Apparently they'd already been given the details of the case, because they had Asakura
restrained in an instant to take him with them. We saw them off at the Building B entrance.
Just as he was about to leave, Asakura told us in a low voice, "The two of you might be able to
end this game of theirs. If you promise you'll get back at them for me, I'll give you a hint."
"A hint?"
"They take DSC ranking into account when they pick which detective gets involved in these
cases."
"Quit running your mouth and get in the car."
A policeman shoved Asakura into a black car, which then disappeared down the snowy road.
The snow had mostly stopped by now, and there was a dim light in the sky to the east.
Kirigiri and I exchanged a glance, and, without putting our thoughts into words, went back
together to Building A.
There, we found a strange sight waiting for us. The police should have still been there, but there
wasn't a single policeman to be found.
"—We've been had," said Kirigiri, full of regret.
"Wh-What happened?"
"Those policemen... I'm sure they were with the Committee."
"Oh, no!"
An hour later, the real police showed up at the Sirius Observatory. This time, I was highly
suspicious of them, but they seemed to be the real deal. Kirigiri and I rode in a patrol car down
the mountain, finally leaving the scene of the crime behind us.
What's more, an ordinary citizen found a black car having fallen off the mountain road. In the car
was a man with two prosthetic legs, dead from severe blunt trauma across his entire body. The
police wrote it off as an accident, and announced through mass media channels that there
would be no further investigation. The dead man's name was given as Tadashi Asakura.
Chapter 7: Daily Life
After the incident, I missed three days of class trying to process it. But, personally, I didn't have
anywhere to go back to except the school dorms on campus, which meant my classmates and
dormmates and even people like the little squirrel-like girl from the crafts club could come out of
their way to express their concern. I had thought that I didn't have any close friends or even just
casual pals I could rely on, but having so many people concerned for me might just make me
happy enough to make up for it. I was able to reflect upon that daily life from a new perspective.
Kyouko Kirigiri had apparently gone back to class the very next day, just like normal. I heard the
name Kyouko Kirigiri over the school broadcast system, as she was called into the middle
school staff room. It was hard for me to think of us attending the same school as just a weird
coincidence. That murder case had been too surreal, and meeting Kyouko Kirigiri during it made
her seem just as surreal. And yet, here she was, undoubtedly here in the real world as just a
regular girl attending middle school.
Five days after the incident—I went to peek into the middle school building during lunch break. I
asked Kirigiri's homeroom teacher what classroom she was in.
In the classroom were rows of young, fresh faces in their first year of middle school, Kyouko
Kirigiri's among them.
She was sitting by the window, propping her chin in her hands and gazing outside. All around
her were girls who had pushed their desks together to eat lunch, and girls who were chattering
away like chirping baby chicks. On one hand, seeing Kyouko Kirigiri in the middle of all that
made her seem lonely, but thinking of it another way, she had melted completely into the
background of the classroom, like a shadow.
A murmur went through the classroom as the girls started noticing me peeking in. Those
murmurs finally spread over to Kirigiri, and at last, she noticed me as well.
Our eyes met.
But, as if nothing was amiss, she just went back to staring blankly out the window.
"Wait, why are you ignoring me?" I entered the classroom and went up to stand next to her. I put
my hands on my hips, staring down at her. Everyone else in the classroom was watching us,
now. Even the girls who had been chatting fell silent. "If it's because you don't want to talk here,
then let's step outside for a bit." I dragged Kirigiri out with me, half by force. I'm sure we became
the subject of a lot of classroom gossip as soon as we left.
Kirigiri and I went all the way out to the deserted entrance of the building. We huddled together
in the shadow of the shoe lockers, as if we were hiding.
Kirigiri leaned back against the lockers, crossing her arms. "Do you need something?" she
asked, looking up at me. She sounded indifferent, but it didn't seem like she was in a bad mood.
This was probably just what she was like.
"Did you hear that Asakura-san died? It was even in the newspaper. They're calling it an
accident."
"I expected that that would happen as soon as I realized he had been taken by the Committee.
Perhaps he understood as much himself—that he had reached his end." Kirigiri looked down at
the ground, letting out a sigh.
"Does the Committee kill the losers of the Duel Noir?"
"I wonder? That may be so, at least in the event that they cannot pay for the tricks that they
purchased."
"No way..." I put a hand on the lockers, hanging my head.
Kirigiri's small head was right in front of mine. I suddenly glanced to the side and noticed a
gaggle of girls in middle school uniforms watching us. When they noticed me looking at them,
they quickly hid.
After the incident, we were famous now, apparently. We'd been reported as ordinary people
who were caught up in the case. There hadn't been any mention of us being involved as
detectives.
"Hey, Kirigiri-chan. This isn't over, is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Victims' Catharsis Committee—we can't just leave them be! The way Asakura-san was
talking, it sounds like lots of other games like that are happening. If that's true, we'd be turning a
blind eye to a criminal organization."
"Yui-oneesama... You really do intend to be a hero through and through, don't you?"
I was actually a little happy to hear that she was still going to call me onee-sama. Once we'd left
the crime scene, I had even thought that our relationship might have reset completely—but
apparently not.
"Those who aim to play the hero are almost always the first to die."
"So you mean they put their life on the line," I replied with pride. "I have the resolve to risk my
life as a detective, too. You don't own the rights to that one."
"I suppose..." Kirigiri looked up at me. Her eyes were right in front of mine.
"What's wrong? Does it make you anxious?"

"No." Kirigiri quickly shook her head, before hesitantly continuing, "Ever since that day, I've been
thinking about the detective Inuzuka."
"A detective who solves his own crimes, huh? Just despicable."
"To me, a detective has always been... a disciple of the fixed and unwavering truth. So I took
pride in being a detective. However..." There, she paused, and shut her mouth abruptly, as if
chastising herself for saying too much.
"It's okay. You can tell me," I said.
Her gaze meandered for a moment before finally looking back up at me. Those anxious,
entreating eyes were more weak and fleeting of an expression than she'd ever shown me
before. "Detectives are not absolute... I had neglected that obvious fact far too much. I was
simply a little surprised to realize it," she said, and ducked her head.
I ignored the girls who were peering over at us, clearly wanting to say something, and instead I
set my hand on Kirigiri's head. "To me, you were nothing short of an angel who had descended
with the truth. I was only able to return to my daily life because you were there."
"Daily life..." Kirigiri murmured, parroting the phrase as if she was unfamiliar with the term,
before falling silent.
"Are you free after school today? There's somewhere I want to go, so do you want to come
with?"
"Somewhere you want to go?"
"The Detective Library. The key to unlocking the secrets of the Victims' Catharsis Committee
might be in there."
After a long silence, Kirigiri nodded.
"Then let's meet back here after school."
I left before I could even see her acknowledge what I had said, heading out through the front
door. The middle school girls parted to let me through.
"A date—it's a date," I told them, and they squealed in shrill reply. I heard their voices behind
me as I went back to my own school building.
I returned to that same entrance after school, and found Kirigiri sitting on the corner of the stairs,
reading a book. I stopped abruptly to observe her. Her eyes ran over the words with
enthusiasm. Her face from the side looked so innocent that I could never tell just by looking at
her that she was a detective who had solved a bloody murder case. She looked perfectly like a
page in a picture book, sitting there after school reading a book as other students hurried home
all around her.
Kirigiri noticed my gaze on her, and looked up at me. "Were you watching me?"
"Aahh, sorry." I ran up to her. "You were just so cute."
"You like to tease, don't you?"
"What are you reading that you like so much? Wait, don't tell me! It's Soji Shimada's new work,
right?"
"No. It's a notebook." She showed me the black cover of the notebook. Oh yeah, now that she
mentions it, I did see her with that before. She stood up from her step, patting the dirt off of the
back of her skirt. "Everything I learned about detectives from Grandfather is written in here."
"I'm amazed that even at a time like this, all you can think about is research."
"This is my daily life."
"Right, well, considering where we're going, it might be for the best to brace ourselves."
We departed from the building's entrance together, cutting across the campus to pass through
the old school gates. We walked together silently, side by side, with nothing in particular worth
talking about. Even the shopping district, with its Christmas music playing, was nothing more
than an irrelevant backdrop to us.
We waited at the bus stop for the bus to come.
There was still some snow underfoot, which easily crumbled with the kick of a foot. I played
around kicking the snow like that as I waited for the bus. Kirigiri didn't join in even once the
whole time we were waiting.
The bus came. Kirigiri and I sat next to each other. Did the other passengers maybe see us as
two schoolgirls who were good friends? I thought that I'd like them to.
"Has anything changed since then?" I asked.
"Changed?"
"I mean, it's not like we heard a bunch of secrets about the Victims' Catharsis Committee from
Asakura-san or anything. Right? I don't really understand the whole thing, but maybe if we know
secrets about a huge criminal organization, we might be in the crosshairs now... That's just what
I've been thinking about.
"There have been no particular irregularities in my surroundings."
"Did your grandfather say anything? I want to hear what his opinion is on all this. You're like,
apprenticed to him, right?"
"Grandfather is currently in Los Angeles. I told him about the case over the phone, but he didn't
seem very concerned. So I can assume this incident wasn't dire enough to draw his attention."
"Hmmmm..."
Her grandfather was apparently a pretty big deal. Was this little girl going to grow up to be a
famous globetrotting detective like him someday?
"But Grandfather did mention one point of interest."
"Aaand?"
"It seems he was involved in the founding of the Detective Library."
"Huhhh... That's pretty amazing, right? How big of a detective family are you guys?" I was
surprised by her upbringing all over again. I already knew that her pride as a detective was
completely out of the ordinary, but that was probably instilled in her by her family, wasn't it?
Seriously—what kind of place was the Kirigiri household? "I mean, I'm from a completely
ordinary family myself."
"Despite that, you still say you'd risk your life as a detective. Where did you get such resolve, I
wonder?" Kirigiri watched me with eyes full of suspicion.
"Do you doubt me?"
"No, not really." She turned to look out the window.
"You're still mad I suspected you so much before, aren't you? I'm really sorry about that."
"I'm not really mad."
"Well, that would be nice if it were true..."

The view outside of the window gradually became a quiet, high-class residential area. There
were large trees growing on the side of the road at regular intervals, and their barren, pointed
branches reached up into the grey sky. It was a strangely deserted street.
"Next stop, Detective Library—Detective Library—" announced the bus.
"I'll let you press the button to let us get off, Kirigiri-chan."
"I never said I wanted to press it."
"I'm gonna press it then. Are you okay with that?"
"Go ahead."
"...No, let's press it together after all. On three—"
"Just hurry up and press it."
"Heheh, it was just a joke!" I leaned over her to press the button by the window.
The bus stopped soon after. We stepped out into the cold, peaceful breeze. Something was
clearly off about the atmosphere in this town. A tall fence spread out before us, and past it I
could see an old building that looked like a haunted house.
We walked along the fence towards the Detective Library entrance. At last, we reached the iron
gate, supported by two exaggerated columns. The gate was slightly open, showing a
Western-style front porch beyond it. We carefully walked up the stone steps, still covered in
snow.
"Have you been here before?" I asked.
"No. This is my first time."
"You didn't come here when you enrolled?"
"Granddad took care of everything for me."
"Oh, I see. Well, the Detective Library might be like a place for you to hone your craft."
Kirigiri nodded. "At first, I myself wasn't sure what the point was in enrolling, but after listening to
your explanation, I think I more or less understand."
"What do you mean?"
"I f I want to be recognized as a detective, becoming Zero Class is the only way." Kirigiri's
expression was stiff.
I finally felt like I understood her. She really isn't anything but a detective. I'm sure her
circumstances must have something to do with her grand-scale home environment. And there's
probably some reason for her strong wish to be recognized as a detective, too.
"People will value you even if you just be yourself. You'll be fine. So don't worry too much about
that part, okay?"
Kirigiri just averted her eyes, apparently with no intention of listening to me.
"Being a high rank doesn't necessarily mean you're a good detective. I mean, just look at people
like Kou Inuzuka."
"But it has value in itself in order to sell myself as a detective."
"Sell yourself...? You sound like you have a specific market in mind."
Kirigiri, instead of responding, went ahead to open the door and go inside. I hastily followed her.
As soon as I went through the door, I was hit with the fragrant aroma of old wood and books.
The Detective Library itself only had about ten years of history, but I heard that the building it
was housed in had been used as a library before that for over fifty years.
Kirigiri stepped through the next door, and then stopped in her tracks, looking around. It looked
like she was already lost.
"Kirigiri-chan," I called out from behind. "Let's go up to the front desk and try getting our cards
renewed. We might have gone up in rank after solving that last case."
"I suppose."
Kirigiri began to walk alone, stopped abruptly, and then waited for me. Maybe she'd decided she
should let me lead the way.
I brought her with me to the front desk. These days, with libraries going digital, lots of them have
fancy circulation desks that make it look like you're in a bank or a hotel. The Detective Library,
however, looked just like the good old analog libraries. The staff members working behind the
counter were wearing white shirts with old-fashioned black arm warmers, too.
"Um... I'd like to renew my card, please..."
I took out my card and set it down on the counter, addressing the worker. He looked to be about
in his fifties, with sunken cheeks. I got the impression he was a true literary type. He looked
down at me for a long moment, and then picked up the card, spending another long moment
looking down at that.
"Please wait just a moment."
He slowly got to his feet and headed towards the computers behind the counter. I could see
about three computer monitors in all. He watched one of them as he slid my card into the slot.
"...Hmm, there is an update. Please wait a bit longer while I get you a new one. Would you like
to keep the same photo?"
"Yeah, that one's fine."
"Understood."
"Actually, while you're at it, can you take a look at her card, too?" I asked, and gestured for
Kirigiri to present her own card. She took her card out of her notebook and held it out to the
worker.
"Please wait about five minutes."
I looked around idly as we were waiting. The counter was in its own room, with doors on either
side. If we went through the door into the next room, we'd find the shelves with all of the
detectives' files. There were a few other workers behind the counter, taking care of some kind of
deskwork. Nobody spoke a single word unnecessarily; I felt like I should be holding my breath
as long as I was there. The Detective Library professed to be neutral, with no ties to any
organization—but I still had to wonder who exactly these staff members were. When I really
thought about it, it was eerie, the way they worked like silent machines.
"All right, they're ready." The man came back to me with two cards in hand. We accepted them.
Yui Samidare: DSC #887
"Oh! I went up a rank! Woohooooo! That's great!" I said, spontaneously jumping for joy.
"Shhhh. Quiet in the library," chastised the worker.
"Sorry!" I apologized in a whisper. "It's thanks to Kirigiri-chan that I went up in rank. I mean, I
didn't really do anything. How's your card looking, Kirigiri-chan?"
"I went up in rank, too."
Kyouko Kirigiri: DSC #917
"Amazing! You ranked up twice!"
"Quiet!"
"Sorry..." I apologized again. "It's a pretty big deal for you to be Rank 7 when you're a first year
in middle school. You might even be the first one the Detective Library's ever seen. You really
are amazing."
"At this rate, then, I'll need to solve four more cases on the level of the Sirius Observatory case
in order to become Zero Class." Kirigiri was as composed as ever.
"I-I guess... But, y'know, I can still congratulate you for now. I guess I let a newbie catch up to
me in rank. But isn't it pretty cool that we're a team of Rank 7 schoolgirl detectives?"
"A team? I don't recall establishing any such thing."
"W-Well, I was just saying that because it would be what people looking at us from the outside
would think, and put on headlines and stuff," I blurted out.
At any rate, I was glad that we both went up in rank. I was as happy for Kirigiri's talent being
recognized as I was happy for myself.
"Aren't you happy?"
"I am."
"Then c'mon, show me a smile! Why don't we take a photo to commemorate the occasion?"
"I was taught to restrain my emotions as much as possible," said Kirigiri, looking away and
sliding her card back into her notebook. "And I've thought of a better idea. An idea to get us
closer to the Victims' Catharsis Committee."
"Ehhh?! You're sure busy thinking about your next move even during a celebration."
"You were the only one celebrating."
"W-Well, yeah, but..."

"Bring me to the room with the detectives' files."
"Right, right, as you wish, milady." I walked past the counter to open the door on the far side.
There was much more to see in here. It was a forest of detectives. With the high-vaulted ceiling,
the lines of bookshelves looked almost like trees. Only, instead of dense green foliage, they
were full of detectives' profiles. Roughly 65,500 detectives blocked off even the light from the
windows, making it dim where we stood.
The bookshelves bore plates indicating the DSC numbers. Visitors could consult these to find
the detective they were looking for. There were, in fact, several visitors other than the two of us.
From divorce issues to lost dogs, murders to international affairs, all sorts of problems plagued
the people gathered here.
"So what was your idea?"
"I realized something upon rising in the ranks. It has to do with the relationship between the
difficulty of the case solved and the number of ranks achieved."
"Yeah... And?"
"We can use the Sirius Observatory case that we were both involved in as a reference point."
"Mm-hm."
"Have you still not realized?"
"Ummm..." I hummed, crossing my arms.
"The Sirius Observatory case was carried out using tricks prepared by the Victims' Catharsis
Committee. Upon taking care of it, I rose two ranks. But, fortunately or unfortunately... that was
due to the fact that I stumbled upon a 'case of fixed difficulty, guaranteed to raise rank if solved'
by chance. On the other hand, you never encountered such a case until now, and thus you went
up only a single rank over the course of three years."
"They do say that stumbling upon cases is the mark of a great detective, but..."
"From that, my conclusion is... among high-ranked detectives, perhaps there are those who
have accepted a Duel Noir before. Particularly those who are highly ranked but were registered
relatively recently."
"Ohhh, I get it!"

"There may even be detectives who have taken care of not just one or two Duels Noirs, but
many more."
"There are! There have to be! Was that what Asakura-san was trying to tell us?"
"Let's look for detectives of interest."
Kirigiri moved through the bookcases, looking up at the DSC number plates. She went straight
towards the 000 shelf. Namely, the bookshelf for the Triple Zero Class, All - All - Rank 0. It was
the furthest bookshelf from the entrance, small, and looking almost like a throne, or perhaps
storage for a secret treasure. It held three files.
"This is just hearsay, but apparently there used to be four Triple Zero detectives, before one of
them was deleted from the registry. No one knows why," I whispered to Kirigiri.
Kirigiri silently picked up one of the files. The papers were kept in a high-quality leather binder.
A name and DSC number was written on the spine.
Gekka Ryuuzouji – DSC #000
The three zeroes were sparkling.
She opened the file to the first page, which was the standard Detective Library form résumé.
The headshot looked younger than I had imagined. Cooler, too. He didn't look frail and bookish,
but more of a romantic lead who looked good with masculine slicked-back hair and a beard.
Judging by his date of birth, he was currently 42 years old.
"He's solved a tremendous number of cases, hasn't he?"
Of all the three Triple Zero Class files, this one had the most pages.
"I'm pretty sure this guy is the armchair detective they call the Armchair Earl. He doesn't waste
his time going to the scene of the crime or investigating personally, so he can solve this many
cases just from his desk."
"Hmmm. Quite a reckless detective."
"You can't talk about a Triple Zero detective that way!" I rebuked.
"I'm sorry," Kirigiri apologized, meekly.
"That's right. You can't forget to show respect."

"How about this one?" Kirigiri picked up the next file.
Johnny Earp – DSC #000
"This guy's famous. He's American." I immediately flaunted my knowledge. "He's the only
private detective in Japan that's authorized by the police to carry a gun. Well, I don't know much
about the circumstances myself, other than that the police and the FBI made some deals...
Apparently, while he's here in this country, he's a 'law enforcement official', not a detective."
"I know him as well."
"Oh, really?"
"He taught me how to fire a gun in America."
"Ohhh... Wait, huh?! You know him personally?"
"I don't know if he remembers me, though."
"I can't believe there are people who just know a Triple Zero... Look at his picture! He looks like
Brad Pitt! He's so cool! You should introduce me to him!"
"He normally lives in New York. Can you speak English?"
"Uhhh..." All I could do was go quiet with nothing more than that to say.
"I didn't know he was a Triple Zero."
Kirigiri set down Johnny's file, and picked up the third.
Rei Mikagami – DSC #000
When she opened the file, the blank résumé was glaring. There was no headshot. There was no
gender identified, and the age was unknown. There were few solved cases listed, but each and
every one of them was a bizarre crime that had captivated detectives and mystery maniacs the
world over. For example, the murder at Road Hill House in England, or the Great Lakes serial
dismemberment murder case that spanned Canada and the USA—cases that even I had heard
of.
"We can't draw any conclusions from these files." Kirigiri put it straight back onto the shelf.
"There isn't even any contact information. Do you think we could perhaps get one of the
employees here to call them for us?"
"Nah, they can't do that. Employees can't be a direct go-between for detectives and clients. But
we could go to the counter and leave a note for the detectives there."
"It can't be helped." Kirigiri toyed with her braid, looking displeased. "But I believe the Triple
Class may be too extraordinary to be the sort of detective we're looking for."
"So should we try looking at the Doubles?"
"I suppose."
We picked a bookshelf at random. Double Zeroes have a zero for their secondary
specialization, and a zero for their rank, to show that they are the highest level detectives. Their
primary specialization isn't a zero, so you just have to look for them within each section of the
shelves, or you won't be able to find them. As if wandering through the forest of detectives, we
walked and gazed at countless files.
"I heard there are about twenty Double Zeroes."
"That's quite a few."
"But that kind of talent is one in three thousand, right? If you think of it that way, Triples and
Doubles really are both out of our league." I sighed heavily.
After that, we took about an hour and picked out seven Double Zero detectives. Particularly
those who had been first registered more recently.
Is one of these people really going to be someone who took part in a Duel Noir?
We moved to the reading room, and looked through the case summaries in the files. But, of
course, it wasn't recorded whether or not any of these were a Duel Noir. All we could do was
decide which seemed likely to be one.
"I guess they don't show direct contact info for the Doubles, either."
"What should we do?" Kirigiri asked, leaning forward and peering into a file in the seat next to
mine.
"All we can do is leave a note."
The Detective Library was incredibly analog. Even now, in the age of e-mail, they expected us
to leave a handwritten note. Kirigiri and I worked together to compose a memo to the Double
detectives. The contents were incredibly simple. We thought that would draw their interest more.
"I would like to know something about the Victims' Catharsis Committee. I request to get in
contact with you. -Yui Samidare"
"That should do it."
I left the memo at the counter, and went on to leave the Detective Library.
"Well, let's head home, Kirigiri-chan."
Kirigiri nodded, and followed after me. We passed through the gate, and stepped out onto the
street, wintry wind blowing. We walked together to the bus stop to wait for the bus.
"You don't live in the dorms, do you? Do you commute from your family's house?"
"Yes. Granddad has been looking after me."
"Huh? What about your mom and dad?"
"They're both gone," said Kirigiri, looking down the road.
"...Sorry for asking a weird question." Actually, didn't she have a complicated reaction to the
subject of her grandfather before? Maybe I should just lay off on talking about her family.
The bus came, and just as we had done on the way there, we sat next to each other. Partway
through, Kirigiri pressed the button to get off.
"The next stop is closest to me."
"Okay. I'll let you know right away if any of the Double Classes contact me."
Kirigiri simply nodded once, not even saying goodbye before she got off the bus.
—What a difficult girl.
But she was a very honest girl, I thought. Her earnest singlemindedness towards the detective
lifestyle couldn't be explained away by a mere sense of duty. She had a pure love for the job.
The view outside the window had already started to get dark. I got off the bus at the shopping
district, and walked the rest of the way home. Scattered Christmas trees adorned the streets.
It was almost Christmas. And before that, the final exams for the semester. After that, it would
be winter break.
Was I going to be eating chocolate cake by myself for Christmas this year, too?
The days passed, and winter break came without any response to our Detective Library note.
As soon as winter break came, the dorm became completely deserted. Everyone had gone
back to their families. Winter break is relatively short, so plenty of girls went home the instant
break started.
Personally, I didn't feel like going home. My parents both work, so it's not like a heartwarming
family reunion would be awaiting me if I did. There wasn't really any reason for me to visit.
Christmas in the dorms again, huh—?
I lay in bed, staring up at the same old ceiling. And as I did, the face of Kyouko Kirigiri popped
into my head.
I wonder what she's up to... I should have gotten her contact info. I wonder if she has a
cellphone.
A sudden thought struck me. If I went to the Detective Library, wouldn't I be able to find her
contact info? The newer the detective, the more likely they were to have that information listed
in their file. They'd be able to take on jobs more easily that way, after all.
I rushed to the Detective Library.
The Detective Library was quiet as always, but there were more visitors than normal. Maybe
more people had problems towards the end of the year?
"Do I have any messages?" I tried asking the person behind the counter, but I was out of luck.
So, I went to go check Kyouko Kirigiri's file. The Sirius Observatory was already here in her
case record without any delay. A phone number was written on her résumé, so I copied it down
and left the Library.
When I returned to the dorms, I gave her a call. I could hear an old man's voice through the
receiver.
"Yes... Hello..."
"Hello, this is Yui Samidare. I go to the same school as Kyouko Kirigiri. Kyouko-san was a great
help to me earlier..."
"Aahh, Samidare-san the detective, right? It seems you were a help to my granddaughter as
well."
"Oh, no, I really owe everything to her."
"I see, I see."
He went along with it, seemingly amused. This was probably her grandfather. Had he made it
back home from Los Angeles?
"Is Kyouko-san currently available?"
"I'll hand it over to her now."
And, not a moment later, it was Kyouko's voice coming from the receiver.
"Yes?"
"Ah, Kirigiri-chan."
"Yui-oneesama?"
"Yeah, it's been a while!" Hearing her voice again after a few days was an instant pick-me-up.
"I don't think it's even been a week."
"That doesn't matter. Can you come to school the day after tomorrow?"
"It would be possible for me to arrive there."
"Then meet me at the front gate at 7PM."
"The gate will be closed at that hour."
"Not on the day after tomorrow! Oh? And why is that, you may ask? You'll just have to come and
find out! Don't miss it!" I hung up before she could answer.
I bet I threw her off just then. I went to bed, imagining the look on her face.
The snow came and went throughout the promised day, there and gone again. The sky was
laden with grey, and yet today felt like the one day that it might just be permissive.
I leaned against one of the pillars of the school's front gate, waiting for Kirigiri. It was just about
to turn 7PM. The small snowflakes reflected the headlights of the cars passing by on the road in
front of me, illuminating the cold night sky. My breath lingered in the air as a white puff after I
tried to warm my freezing fingers.
At last, Kyouko Kirigiri crossed the street towards me. She appeared out of the snowy darkness
wearing a coat over her normal school uniform.
"Sorry for calling you out so late." I waved to her as she approached the gate.
"The answer is that there is Christmas Mass today," Kirigiri said, her hands staying in her coat
pockets. "The answer to your earlier telephone quiz, that is. As you hung up before I had the
opportunity to answer, I came here simply to say that. Well, I'll be off now, then." She turned,
and really did start heading back down the way she came.
"Wait a minute!"
"What?" Kirigiri turned back around. There was no change in her expression. If anything, she
looked even more antisocial than usual.
"Can you just forget about your daily life for one day, and come along with me for my daily life
instead?"
"—What do you mean?"
"Don't worry about it," I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the gate.
From what could be seen of the church, it seemed that Mass was already underway. The lights
were turned on, unlike most nights, making it shine amid the falling snow. The fact that it was
the only thing that could faintly be seen through the darkness made it look incredibly illusory.
"This way," I beckoned Kirigiri.
The front entrance to the school was already open. It was usually shut at this hour, but it had
been left open to let the choir use the classrooms for Christmas prep. But the power was off,
and the building was dark.
"Is this where we're going?" Kirigiri hesitated to enter.
"Yep. Not afraid of ghosts, are you?"
"...I do not believe there are any ghosts present."

"You haven't heard? Actually, they say there are a lot here at night."
"...You're lying. Such a thing is implausible and illogical." Kirigiri vigilantly observed her
surroundings. Was it just me, or had she gone stiff, too?
"It's fine, see?" I gripped Kirigiri's slender wrist and walked down the pitch dark hallway. Holy
night though it may have been, it was eerie being in an empty school building at night. If we do
see a monster, I wonder if it'll be a ghost turkey, or Santa Claus with a hatchet or something.
I brought Kirigiri up the stairs. When we made it to the top, I forced open the door that greeted
us.
"How did you open that without a key?"
"There's a trick to it, actually. If you jiggle the doorknob up and down the lock will come loose."
"—I see."
We stepped out onto the roof. It was covered in a thin layer of snow. Needless to say, there was
no sign of anyone around. On this Christmas night, at least, we were the first to set foot on it.
We went up to the fence together, looking down towards the church. It was like one big lamp
lighting the area. We could see people going to Mass: girls in school uniforms, parents with their
children, boys and girls coupled off together.
"See? Isn't it pretty?"
I stole a glance at Kirigiri to try and read her reaction. But she remained stoic, looking down past
the fence with the same expression as she always had.
"Hey, Kirigiri-chan? Maybe you can't tell, but I'm really thankful for you," I said, and at last she
inclined her head to look at me. "We met in the worst way, but I'm still glad that you were there
with me. It's like... I've been working as a detective and going to school all this time, but I still
just felt—off, no matter what I did. Like, why the heck am I doing this detective thing anyway?"
"I see."
"I, um... I've never told you this before, but I lost my little sister when I was younger."
Kirigiri watched me wordlessly.
"She was kidnapped, and then murdered before we ever got her back. That case is still
unsolved. So yeah, that's why I became a detective. I felt so guilty that I couldn't protect my
sister. What if I had been kidnapped instead? We looked so much alike. The more I think about
it—"
I couldn't summon the words to finish the sentence. I threaded my fingers through the fence and
looked up at the distant snowfall.
"Sometimes, I start to lose sight of why I'm still a detective. Of course I want to be useful, and
help people out when they're in trouble. But maybe I'm just fooling myself... or that's what I end
up thinking, anyway. Maybe I just want forgiveness, and I'm just distracting myself from the truth
with detective work..."
"Hmm."
"But when I look at you, that just seems like a stupid half-baked feeling. I—don't understand
your reasons for being a detective, but you're just so brilliant at it. I thought I might want to learn
from your straightforward attitude."
"My reasons for being a detective..." Kirigiri murmured, looking up at the snow with me.
"You've never thought about it?"
"No," came the immediate reply.
"You're so cool. You're a born detective. But maybe one day... you'll start to doubt yourself like I
do. If that ever happens, try to stay pure, the way you are now. I just wanted to tell you that one
thing."
(Thanks kanan is love for finishing the translation below!)
The church door opened, and candle-bearing choir singers began lining up outside the
door. It seems like the Mass was over. The candlelights flickered like signposts leading
to the school gates.
"Right, I have something for you."
I took a small paper bag with a ribbon seal from my coat pocket and handed it to Kirigiri.
“What’s this?”
"Your Christmas gift."
"……Can I open it?"

"Sure."
Kirigiri received the paper bag, teared open the seal and took out the present inside.
“This is called a Rose in Vitro. I thought it felt just like you… you’re not mad if I say
this?”
Kirigiri’s eyes were sparkling. She shook her head.
“This… oh… thank you. It’s very beautiful…”
Her cheeks seemed to redden slightly as she stared at the rose intently. It seems she
likes the gift. Snowflakes drifted onto the vitro tube, making the glass look crystal clear.
“About that… Yui-oneesama.”
“Yes?”
“Am I the replacement for your dead sister?”
Kirigiri stared past the rose in vitro and gazed at me.
“What, what are you saying? There’s no such thing. You’re you. How can someone
replace my dead sister?”
“Is that so. Good.”
“Do you understand me?”
“I understand.” Kirigiri said, hugging the rose to her chest. “By the way… I must also
thank Yui-oneesama for believing me during that incident.”
"Well... I haven’t really done anything worthy of your thanks..."
I was a little embarrassed and quickly denied it.

Suddenly, I remembered the events on that night.
“As a matter of fact, we still haven't done what we promised that night.”
I said while sticking out my right hand.
“What promise?”
“You said a true handshake should be left when all things are said and done. Do you
remember?”
Kirigiri nodded and took a step closer.
And held out her small hand.
Our cold fingertips gently intertwined.
“Please take care of me… Kirigiri Kyouko-chan.”
“...take care of me too, Yui-oneesama.”
At that moment, the phone in my coat pocket rang.
I took a look — it was an unknown caller.
I glanced at Kirigiri. She nodded, and I pressed the ‘accept call’ button.
“Hello…?”
No response.
“Hello?”
I repeated, listening for any response.
At that moment, there was the sound of some grand and majestic music at the end of
the telephone line.
The music got louder and louder.
This piece of music — isn’t it Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”(Die Walküre)?

As the music grew in volume, there was a rumbling sound coming from an unknown
source. The sound didn’t come from the phone receiver but from the snowy grounds
where we were.
Red and white lights shone starkly in the darkness.
The source for this unabashed noise was none other than a large vehicle approaching
us at an alarming rate.
It was a helicopter.
The polished grey vehicle hovered to our heads. The wind pressure generated by the
propellers blew our hair all about. Kirigiri held her skirt down with one hand, the other
hand tightly gripping the railing.
Taking a closer look, there was a man standing with his legs wide on the open hatch.
He wore a form-fitting suit which was flapping up and down, his pretty tie fluttering in the
wind. The most ridiculous thing about this was the bobble on his Santa hat flopping
around.
“Merry Christmas!”
A male voice suddenly rang out from my phone. At the same time, the man on the
helicopter exaggeratedly lifted the mobile phone on his left hand as if to gesture to me.
What exactly— is going on?
The helicopter hovered in the air, while approaching the school roof. Looks like the
“Flight of the Valkyries” was the background music played on the helicopter, and judging
from the trumpet in the man’s right hand, a part of it was performed live.
I stared, stunned, as the man with the trumpet jumped from the helicopter— to the
school roof!
The man adjusted his suit and tie, gestured to the helicopter, and the helicopter sped off
into the distance.
He then slowly walked towards Kirigiri and me.

Who is he?
Could he be a murderer sent by the Victim Catharsis Committee?
I huddled close to Kirigiri, poised and alert.
Huh?
This man… I recognise his face from somewhere. Just around thirty, a wild and unruly
gentleman—
“And hello to you! Two lovely teenage detectives.”
“Could you be…”
“That’s right! I’m the great detective with the alias The Fastest Passion “Allegro Agitato”,
Nanamura Suisei!”
Previously, we left notes for double-zero detectives in the detective library. He was one
of them— Nanamura Suisei. His DSC number was "900"— a class “9” double-zero
detective is something of a rare sight.
“Could it be about… ‘Duel Noir’?”
“Of course.”
Nanamura Suisei took out a black envelope from his inner suit pocket.
As expected, we managed to meet someone related to the the Victim Catharsis

Committee.
But what was unthinkable was the arrival of a revered double-zero detective… and his
way of arrival was completely unexpected.
“Look like the house can’t wait to welcome us.”
I took the envelope and studied its contents with Kirigiri.
This is…
“This incident was enough to summon a double-zero detective, and it may turn out to be
a miserable experience for two rookies like you, but— do you want to come with me?”
Kirigiri and I exchanged a glance.
Then nodded at the same time.
“Of course!”
Hear me, Detective. Listen to the cries of the Black.
Place — Norman's Hotel — 80,000,000 yen
Weapon — Knife — 5,000,000 yen
Weapon — Revolver — 15,000,000 yen
Weapon — Hammer — 3,000,000 yen
Weapon — Rope — 3,000,000 yen
Weapon — Automobile — 10,000,000 yen
Trick — Locked Room — 100,000,000 yen
Trick — Disappearing Act — 100,000,000 yen
Other — Cash — 1,000,000,000 yen
Total cost — 1,316,000,000 yen
This detective is summoned according to the above cost — Suisei Nanamura.

To be continued!

Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1 COMPLETE

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DANGANRONPA KIRIGIRI VOLUME 1

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This really isn't the kind of thing I'm into.

"Welcome to the Picturesque Sirius Observatory".

"Welcome to the Despairesque Sirius Observatory".

It's okay, I can remember.

My name is... Yui Samidare, age 16. I'm a detective.

I probably can't just drag the bed along with me...

All right! Regaining my freedom was actually pretty easy!

She's not... dead, is she?

No—her small back was moving up and down, just slightly.

Is she just unconscious?

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1​, part 2

—Without taking a single breath.

He was unmoving, eyes open.

That's when his head turned towards me.

Wh-What does this mean?

​ ither the heads or the bodies were swapped around in a circle.

So who was that person?

She couldn't have—

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1,​ part 3

I shook my head, as if shaking off my sudden burst of sentimentality.

"Calm down. I am not the culprit."

"In that case, I also plead innocence, calling myself as a witness."

"I'm telling you it's not me! I'm a victim!"

"That's not natural! I would never do that!"

I bit my lip, at a loss for how to respond. "Mmmmph..."

"Probably. It looks like they'd be good for quick decapitation."

"Why would you think that?"

She was right…

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1,​ part 4

Wait, what "training"...?

So in the end, she just fainted too? Mm, wait a minute?

There's... no way that could be it.

"And then what?"

​ rabbed the culprit's hand​."

"Grabbed?" I asked, disappointed. "Is that all?"

"What did it feel like?"

"It was a man's hand."

"Really? Are you sure about that?"

"I forgot about that."

Kirigiri nodded, still turned away.

"No, I still wouldn't call it definitive proof."

"I wonder what that's supposed to mean?"

We shook hands, as if evaluating each other, exchanging a glance.

"What will you do?"

"You still hadn't confirmed that either way?"

"I'll look into it."

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1,​ part 5

"...Is that okay?"

"If it's used to prove my innocence."

"So I'm serving as surveillance?"

"You'll rescue me?"

"...I suppose," she responded meekly.

"There wasn't any sign of anything in the snow outside?"

And so, the murder mystery became even more baffling.

No, you could say it makes it a lot more simple.

"...Yui-oneesama," Kirigiri interrupted. "What are you talking about?"

"...Show me the black letter you're talking about."

"If you want?"

"Unfold it and show me."

"What? What do you mean?"

"This is most likely... a game."

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1, part 2

ither the heads or the bodies were swapped around in a circle.

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1, part 3

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1, part 4

rabbed the culprit's hand."

Chapter 1: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 1, part 5

Chapter 2: Duel Noir 1, part 2

Chapter 2: Duel Noir 1, part 3

Chapter 2: Duel Noir 1, part 4

Chapter 3: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 2, part 2