Determining that the equipment was beyond repair, we decided to continue with our planned course of action. And by that, I mean Akane-san's burial.
We went to the storage room, placed her body on a big stretcher, and headed for the mountain woods behind the mansion. The stretcher was kept in the mansion in case of an emergency, but I doubt they had had an emergency like this in mind.
No…
Maybe they had.
This time we would bury the body alone, without a sleeping bag. Hikari-san took the front of the stretcher and I took the back. Despite her small frame, Hikari-san's length of service as a maid was apparent in her surprising upper-body strength.
Kunagisa followed behind me carrying the shovel.
Carrying the back of the stretcher placed the corpse directly in my field of vision, front, and center. Even being used to this sort of thing, it wasn't the most pleasurable experience in the world.
On the way, I remembered something I had meant to ask.
"Hikari-san, was Akane-san wearing the same clothes when you brought the book last night?"
"Yes, they were the same," she replied. "Of course, she still had a head, too."
It wasn't the type of joke you laugh at. It was far too true to be funny.
The digital camera had been destroyed beyond all repair, so naturally, we couldn't make a record of the storage room where Akane-san was killed. This was probably exactly what the killer had hoped.
Surely the killer was mocking us. But he or she was taking Kunagisa's memory too lightly.
"Hmm. Hmmhmmhmm. If we assume the killer broke everything because he didn't want there to be a record of the scene where Kanami-chan was killed, why exactly was that? Did the pictures show some concrete evidence? I don't remember anything like that."
Inside her head was an image of not only yesterday's crime scene but also of the storage room we had just visited, just as accurate and precise as that digital camera. They didn't call Kunagisa Tomo a prodigy for nothing.
"Anything sticking out in your mind?"
"Uh-huh. Tons of things are sticking out. I'm trying to narrow them down. Ermm, ah, right…" She began mumbling to herself. Once she had gone into this kind of state, it was best not to bother her. I looked back over at Hikari-san.
"So where should we bury her, Hikari-san?"
"I suppose, away from Ibuki-san would be best."
I couldn't have agreed more.
Walking through the mountain forest for a while, we eventually found a spot we thought would make a decent burial ground and decided to begin digging. Yesterday, we had had twice as many men, so today promised to be relatively exhausting. I had hoped Shinya-san would be able to help us, but alas, he was on a different team. That and, for the average guy, having to bury the corpses of two acquaintances in a period of two days was more than a little nerve-racking. And this was true for a guy like Shinya-san.
Unless you were a guy like me.
In which case it was nothing to write home about.
"This should do."
I brushed the hair out of my face. If this were summer, I would've been sweating like crazy. I hoisted myself out of the hole and lowered Akane-san's body into it. Then, a brief, silent prayer. I didn't know whether or not there was a point to such actions, but I figured it was better to do it than not.
"Regardless of where or how I die, or who kills me for what reasons, you won't hear a complaint out of me." The last words I had heard out of Akane-san. But did she really mean it? Even being killed like this, had she crossed over to the other side like a saint, without a single gripe?
For me, that was an impossible feat.
"I really wish we could bury her with the head, huh?" Hikari-san said. "Ibuki-san, too. Why do you suppose the killer cut the heads off anyway?"
"That's the question of the week, I guess. But we keep coming up with the same answer." That is, "I don't know."
I scooped up some dirt with the shovel and began burying Akane-san's body. My joints would be hurting tomorrow for sure. If I still had the mental faculties to feel pain, that is.
There was no saying I wouldn't be the next murder victim. The chances weren't very high, but it wasn't impossible.
A serial killing.
Maybe it was already over with Kanami-san and Akane-san. According to the information from Kunagisa's old buddy Chii-kun, the pair had had some sort of relationship in the past, although I couldn't say what kind, so there was always the possibility that the whole ordeal was already over. But maybe that was just overly optimistic thinking.
At long last, Akane-san's body was completely buried.
"Hikari-san, since we're already out here, would you mind taking me somewhere where we can see that storage room window from the outside?"
"Certainly."
She began walking.
Kunagisa followed behind, her blue hair waving. Speaking of which, I hadn't put her hair up at all today. I decided to do so properly once we got back to her room.
As we were walking, Hikari-san turned to me with a serious expression. "Thank you so much." Not knowing what that was in regards to, I was taken aback.
"At breakfast, you stood up for me. So I wanted to thank you."
"Oh, well, I didn't just do it because it was you. I just hate the idea of making the same mistake again. Even putting mistakes aside, I just hate repetitive actions, really."
Maybe that was why my memory was so bad.
"Nyahaha, that is so you, Ii-chan," Kunagisa giggled childishly. "But really, you did it for Hikari-chan, right? 'Cuz she's right in the center of your strike zone."
"What exactly is my strike zone?"
"She's older than you, she's a girl, she's petite, she's got long hair, she's slender, she doesn't wear any rings or anything, and she's even wearing an apron dress."
"I've never said anything about apron dresses."
"Also girls who wear jeans on the bottom and nothing on top, librarian-lookin' girls who dress in white uniforms and wear glasses, gothy girls who are taller than you and have brown hair and wear jerseys…"
"Don't make me sound like such a freak."
Damn. She sure was chatty.
But to be sure, Hikari-san was totally up my alley. In terms of speed, I preferred the slight harshness of Akari-san's personality, but certainly, I had no problem with Hikari-san's gentle "slowball." I suppose Teruko-san was some sort of disappearing magic pitch…
I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
"Hah…" Hikari-san gave an ambiguous smile tinged with embarrassment. "Anyway, I wanted to thank you. My mistress can be quite… Severe in these cases. Plus, unlike yesterday with Sonoyama-san, this time it seems like I must be the killer. Even I couldn't help but think so. At least with Sonoyama-san, there was the pretense that it was a sealed room, so really, nobody could have been the killer. But this time—"
"Don't worry about that anymore, Hikari-san." I was becoming a little irritated, so I cut her off mid-sentence. "You've already thanked me, and you've already shown your sincerity, so you don't have to keep thanking me for everything."
"But—"
"If the situation had been reversed, you wouldn't have just left me there on my own, right? I think you would have done the same for me."
"But I think if that happened, you would thank me."
Well, I'll be damned. She was playing hardball.
"I think he means that you're a friend," Kunagisa said. "And we don't doubt our friends. That's why I don't think Ii-chan or you could be the killer."
"Friends?" she nodded, brimming with emotion. "I've never had friends before. I've been by my mistress's side for as long as I can remember."
"I don't have any friends, either. Neither does Ii-chan. So we'd be happy if you'd be our friend."
Kunagisa took Hikari-san's hand.
Just looking at a sight like this was enough to bring a smile to your face. But realistically speaking, it would've been hard for Kunagisa and Hikari-san to continue a friendship, I thought. From here on out, Iria-san would likely need Hikari-san at her side more than ever before, and meanwhile, Kunagisa was scheduled to head back home. And once back, Kunagisa was bound to stay holed up in her home all the time.
Kunagisa Tomo was a lonesome girl.
They often say that geniuses are completely self-sufficient. If that was the case, Kunagisa fit the bill.
And most likely, unable to analyze the situation in any other way, it was I who was the loneliest.
"Oh. it's over there. The window."
I looked around in confusion for a minute. There wasn't a window in sight.
"Oh, is it that one? I said, pointing to the only window I could see, which stood at about the height of my chest.
"Yeah, that's it."
"But that height is..."
"It looks high up from the inside, but half this place is built on a mountain, so…"
While I listened to her, I looked into the room through the window. You could make out a small puddle of blood, the wooden chair, and the door. It was without a doubt the storage room where I had been sleeping and where Akane-san was killed.
Wow. So part of the mansion was buried in the mountain, including this room.
"In that case, breaking in wouldn't be so hard, huh?"
"But you can't open the window from the outside. And it doesn't lock with just a latch, either, so you couldn't get it to unlock by rattling it a little."
"Well, what about the possibility that Akane-san opened the window on her own, letting the killer in?" Kunagisa suggested. "Like maybe the killer knocked to get her to open it. Y'know, like 'anybody home?'"
"It's hard to believe Akane-san would do anything to let the killer inside. I mean, it's Akane-san. Plus, this really is quite a height. It feels all the more real when you're looking from the top down. I, for one, sure wouldn't want to jump down from the window."
The window was the kind that tilted open, and only partially, so it didn't look like there was much room to make a balanced jump, either. And it looked like if you didn't make a proper landing, you could easily break a bone, or even die if you happened to hit your head.
"But even supposing Akane-san had accidentally let the killer in, she could've easily called for help. The house phone was right by her."
"Maybe she was attacked in her sleep… Oh wait, I'm an idiot. If she was sleeping she couldn't open the window," Kunagisa said.
"And even ignoring that fact, how would the killer get back out? Even an expert rock climber couldn't get up a flat wall like that."
"Teehee! Like a gecko." Kunagisa poked her head inside the window and looked around. "Oooh, it is a dangerous drop, huh? What if the killer used rope?"
"Rope, huh? But there are no trees in this area to tie it around."
I looked around the area. Whether it had been deforested or it had always been this way, the whole place was nothing but a big grass plain, and there was nothing appropriate for tying a rope around.
"And y'know, rappelling isn't the easiest trick in the book, either. I have some experience with it, but it's pretty damn tough. The skin from your hands peels off and stuff."
"Not if you wear gloves."
"Well, yeah, but I still think it's pretty unlikely. They might as well have brought out a ladder and stuck it through the window. That's probably more likely anyway," I said.
"But a ladder wouldn't fit through a gap this small. It would get caught halfway, and then a person couldn't fit through."
"Hmm, I wonder. Hikari-san, is there a ladder anywhere on this island?"
"Well, no…"
"What about the possibility that someone brought one with them?"
"I don't think so. I would've noticed if someone brought something that big."
"How about a rope ladder? Then they could easily hide it in their luggage, and it wouldn't get caught in the window."
"Ii-chan, you even forget stuff you said yourself? If it was a rope ladder, there wouldn't be anything to tie it to. It would be possible if they stuck some kind of metal hook in the wall, but that would've left a hole. The wall looks fine as far as I can see."
That was true. This was just common sense, not the kind of thing even worth bringing up. But for the sake of confirmation, we were discussing it anyway. It was just another form of "pre-established harmony."
I faced Hikari-san.
"Have any ideas?" I asked. "Or even just any observations?"
"Hmm, nothing in particular…" she said as she approached the window. "But assuming the killer didn't enter through the door, the window was the only other way to break in, huh?"
"Break in… But maybe they didn't even have to break in." I was just coming up with this on the spot. "The chair is over there, which means that must have been where Akane-san was sitting and reading. Maybe the killer made some sort of lasso out of rope, put it in through the window, caught it around Akane-san's neck, and then pulled her up. So she was strangled to death. Then she was pulled up as far as the window, where her head was cut off. How about that?"
Implausible, huh? At the very least, it didn't have any holes. The killer wouldn't have had to sneak in through the window, or even enter the room, and still could have killed her.
There were no holes at—"Oh no, wait, that's no good."
"Why not? I didn't think it was so implausible," Hikari-san said, confused. "If that was the case, anyone could have done it."
"Human bodies aren't so light."
For a woman, Akane-san wasn't small. She was taller than average, and she looked like she must have weighed at least 110 pounds. She probably wasn't as much as 130, but she definitely wasn't in the 90s, either. To lift her from this height would've required not only a really tough rope but some incredible arm strength to boot. I definitely couldn't have done it. To pull someone up this high with just two arms was a crazy feat of strength.
"Shinya-san's probably the strongest one here, but he's got an alibi. And even if he's the strongest one here, that's very relative. I don't think even he could lift a human body by himself. Not to mention that Akane-san would've been resisting all the while."
And while she was resisting, the house phone would have been right beside her. If she even just kicked it over, somebody would have discovered what was happening. It wouldn't have been a very wise method.
"Plus, in that case, the window would have had to be open. But would she have really opened the window and then turned her back to it? She wasn't stupid; in fact, quite the opposite. So she was probably being somewhat cautious."
Indeed.
Dammit. And here I thought I was getting a little warm, but I was still on the wrong track. I felt an unpleasant sensation like I was in some twisted dimension. It was like searching for the corner of a circle. Something was decidedly off. Something was depressingly messed up. What the hell was I doing wrong?
I felt as if I was being given the run-around, big-time.
"Anyway, let's go back to the room. There's nothing more to see here."
Not that there was anything to see back at the room.
Seemingly reluctant to leave, Kunagisa stayed gazing in through the window for a while, but finally turned and began to follow me.
"Did you spot something?"
"Uh-uh, nothing special. More importantly, I'm hungry."
"Oh yeah?"
"Then let's go have lunch," Hikari-san said.
"Yeah," I nodded.