The atmosphere downstairs was not good.
As Ichijō Mirai walked downstairs, he stood at the corner of the stairs and overheard a rather listless and distracted conversation in the dining room.
No one was talking about "The drawbridge is burned, the phone won't ring, is someone trying to kill us? but it was as if everyone was talking, and the air was a way of communicating in a subtle way.
Humans are intelligent creatures who communicate in more than just words, but they're not very pleasant, Ichijō Mirai thought as he continued down the stairs.
He looked toward the restaurant, not at the others, and found Suzuki Sonoko in the crowd.
Because she was the only one who turned around.
Seriously, the people attending the party were not familiar with each other. They had only chatted online for a few months, and they encountered a very bad signal. So even when they talked sporadically, they did not exchange glances or look at each other. Most of them lowered their heads to look at their plates and cut steaks seriously. They were afraid that someone in the same seat really wanted to do something illegal or criminal. They were even more afraid that if they looked up, they would inadvertently discover the murderer's flaw and be silenced.
Suzuki Sonoko, who had trusted companions and was not part of this subtle atmosphere, held her fork in one hand and kept her face blank as she turned her head as if she had heard something when she was about to bite into a piece of steak.
At the sight of Ichijō Mirai's silhouette, that confusion melted away as easily as sugar in hot water, and she realized with a start, "Mr. Mirai!"
"What are you doing down here, is Conan awake?"
Bewildered and innocent, but able to recognize Ichijō Mirai's presence with precision.jpg
Ichijō Mirai had gotten used to this over and over again, and smiled and nodded at Suzuki Sonoko and the others who had heard him, "Well, Conan just woke up, and seems to be in good spirits, so don't worry about it too much, Ms. Mouri."
Mouri Ran stood up and immediately said, "Then Mr. Mirai should eat first, I'll go up and take care of Conan."
While the others still had most of their dinner on their plates, she and Suzuki Sonoko had very little left on theirs and looked like they were planning to eat as soon as possible and head upstairs. Ichijō Mirai's eyes swept over the table and nodded again, "Fever requires hot water upstairs, I'll get it with you."
Finally having something substantial to talk about was like an icebreaker, and the others stood up with relief in their eyes.
"I prepared a little extra when I prepared dinner, it's warming in the kitchen right now, I'll go get it," The worker said, without looking at anyone, walking towards the kitchen, "and Mr. Mirai's share."
"You haven't eaten yet, Mr. Detective, so I'll do it," Kuroda Naoko turned her head towards the window couch in the living room, "There's also a kettle in the guest room, I'll fill it with drinking water and bring it up."
"Uh," said the villa owner, looking left and right, "You need ice on your forehead for a fever, right? I'll get ice!"
After a few steps, he stopped and hesitated, "There are ice cubes in both the refrigerator and the wine cellar, but there are dishes in the refrigerator, so the ice cubes might be too tasty, and the wine cellar is edible, but..."
It's just that, since we're going to the wine cellar, and dinner is Western, should we get some wine to drink?
But the drawbridge was destroyed, and the phone can't be dialed, so isn't it a bit much to drink at this time?
Ichijō Mirai thought for a moment, realizing the villa owner's hesitation, and just as he was about to deny it, he saw the other man looking over at him hesitantly, "It's just that I'm a little scared..."
He: "?"
"The wine cellar is underground, you need to go down to get it, once the cellar door is closed, there won't be much air in there," The villa owner said, his voice lowering, his body was motionless and dead, his eyes were probing, "Ahem, I don't mean to say that someone will smother me while I'm down there with the door closed, how could that be possible, haha, I'm afraid that the cellar door will close by itself, and that's a bad thing."
"Mr. Mirai, you're a detective, I trust you, why don't we..."
Ichijō Mirai: "."
"Ahem," Tanaka Kikue coughed low as well, unable to hold it back, a smirk appearing on her face, "I'll go with you."
She blinked, clenched her fist and raised her hand, waving it in the air, her eyebrows raised, "You're not afraid of me too, are you?"
The villa owner was more at ease with the women than the men, and he immediately nodded his head in response, "Okay, okay, let's both go get it then."
The two jumpiest guys left side by side.
Ichijō Mirai made a mental prayer of silence and sat down at the table without changing his expression.
Mr. Red Herring, one of the few people still in the restaurant, also looked to his right and left, rubbed his head in confusion, and muttered, not too quietly, "But-"
"But it's not good to spread out now, is it?"
"And ice isn't a necessity, it's just for the forehead, it's not for eating, so what's wrong with stringing it along," He muttered, "It's not about getting ice, it's about trying to get out of the suffocating restaurant."
It wasn't the fact that everyone stayed in the restaurant that was scary, it was the fact that the group was spread out, giving the murderer a chance to take advantage of the situation.
After muttering, as if remembering something, he said, "By the way, Mr. Detective, the landline downstairs is not working either!"
"I see it's snowing outside again, it's because the place is too isolated and it's snowing, that's why there's no signal for a while, right?"
As he spoke, his chubby face broke into a sobbing heap, looking as if he had already guessed that the villa was infested with people trying to break the law, but was still resisting because he didn't want to believe it until it was too late.
Ichijō Mirai took his mind off of the villa owner and Tanaka Kikue and looked over at Mr. Red Herring's wrinkled, chubby cheeks, "Maybe."
He noticed that Mr. Red Herring's dinner plate was clearly fuller than the others, it was full to begin with, the whole plate was evenly greased, a third of it was empty, it looked like it was only partially eaten, and out of the rest, a few steaks had forks stuck in them but showed no signs of having been eaten.
Suzuki Sonoko and the others were almost finished, and the others were halfway through their meals.
"I haven't eaten yet," Ichijō Mirai inquired politely, looking upward and back at Mr. Red Herring, "Have you not finished your meal either? As it happens, we can dine together."
The laborer and Mouri Ran came out of the kitchen, each of them carrying a dinner, the former carrying a tray with two cups of hot water in addition to the dinner, which he handed to Ichijō Mirai and a cup of hot water, and then went up to the third floor.
After they had left, Suzuki Sonoko looked around carefully, and when the others at the table were not looking, she fished out a small square box from the small satchel she was carrying, poured out two pieces of icing sugar on the lid, and quietly showed them to Ichijō Mirai from under the table, "Would you like some sugar, Mr. Mirai?"
She'd already brought it out, so naturally Ichijō Mirai nodded in agreement, "Thank you, Ms. Suzuki."
But he couldn't help but give her a sideways glance.
Suzuki Sonoko, apparently oblivious to the problem, did not see a problem with her repeated precision in catching Ichijō Mirai's appearance and tendencies, and was happily plunging the icing sugar into the hot water.
After a moment's thought, she put another piece of icing sugar into her own cup and carefully looked over at Ichijō Mirai, her eyes speaking: Oh no, I forgot that the atmosphere was bad, Mr. Mirai, the icing sugar isn't poisonous, I'll drink it with you!
The icing sugar melted in the hot water, quickly spreading out two not-so-obvious melting trails, the glass shimmered a little under the incandescent lamp, Suzuki Sonoko, who was cautiously looking over, was just near the glass, and so the green eyes reflected a few reflections of the glass, bright and shiny.
Ichijō Mirai paused, and just as he was about to speak, darkness fell upon him.
The lights in the living room were turned off.
In the sudden darkness, there were panicked voices, far and near, far from the third floor, near from the dining room table, the crackle of someone standing up violently and overturning the dinner plate, and the panicked voice asking, "What, what's wrong?!"
"Mr. Detective, are you still there?"
It's Mr. Red Herring.
And the young male who was splashed with Mr. Red Herring's dinner, "Hey, watch it, it's all over me!"
He quickly agreed with Red Herring, also calling out to Ichijō Mirai, "Mr. Detective?"
"A sudden power outage... no, it can't be happening..."
Ichijō Mirai inexplicably has the feeling of being surrounded by shivering villagers in the midst of a flurry of werewolf killings where anyone could be a werewolf, and he's the judge, the only character who can't be a werewolf.
Or, for another example, a young sheep that encounters a wolf sees a shepherd and immediately, as if pardoned, circles around its owner, rubbing its fluffy fur against him.
He sighs, "I'm still here."
The two adult males breathed a sigh of relief and reassurance.
The darkness was so sudden that Ichijō Mirai's retinas still had some of the color of Suzuki Sonoko's green eyes in them, and he closed his eyes to let the shadows fade away as he calmly began to eat his dinner with his knife and fork in his hand, "I guess the power went out... as you just said, it was probably because the snow was too thick for the power to go out."
"But, Mr. Red Herring, you didn't use much of your dinner, and now that it's all spilled, you're going to be hungry in the middle of the night, aren't you? Why don't we ask that temporary part-time job gentleman to prepare another snack for you, and you can put it in your room in advance, so as to avoid the danger of traveling at night."
A fat man who eats only half of a normal person's meal will never be full.
If Mr. Red Herring is really fat.
Mr. Red Herring took two breaths before replying, "Well, there's still some left, so I'll make myself a late-night snack if you call later."
He was concerned about Suzuki Sonoko, "Ms. Apprentice, are you okay? Why haven't I heard your voice?"
Suzuki Sonoko, sitting honestly in her seat, not having moved since darkness fell, answered, "Huh? I'm here."
After a moment's reaction, she realized that what Red Herring was asking was why she didn't scream when two grown men were panicking, so she added, "I'm right next to Mr. Mirai, so I won't be in danger."
So even if the darkness suddenly fell, she wasn't too scared.
Just: "Ran and the others, and Ventriloquist and the others who went to the cellar..."
There won't be any accidents, will there?
Ichijō Mirai put down his knife and fork, "Ms. Tanaka and the others will probably be joining us in the dining room soon, but Conan has a fever, and Ms. Mouri probably won't be able to bring him down, so would you like to go up and see?"
Then he asked the other two adult males, "Do you have a lighter?"
After a flurry of fumbling noises, a red ghostly light flared in the darkness and Mr. Red Herring, holding up his lighter, said, not too kindly, "Forgot my own lighter, ha ha, so we'll go up together?"
He looked to Ichijō Mirai for guidance, apparently acquiescing to the leader.
Ichijō Mirai replied, "Do you actually smoke? I didn't smell smoke on you when we bumped into each other."
"I thought Mr. Hamano would be the one to take out a lighter."
The young man did have a lighter with him, and only now did he rummage for it, lighting up after Red Herring's had gone out, "I have one too."
"Well," he frowned, not realizing the meaning of Ichijō Mirai's question, "why don't we wait for them?"
"If Ms. Mouri doesn't come down, the maid will always come down to announce, and it's so dark now, so if there's an accident on the way up...ahem, I mean, Tanaka and the others will be scared if they don't see us when they come back!"
The lighter went out and Red Herring lit it again, alternating between using it as a light, "The cellar is underground, it needs a light, right?"
The light of the fire shone on his face, illuminating a calm expression of partial fear, as if he didn't pay much attention to Ichijō Mirai's question just now, he was worried by the way, "What if I accidentally fall off the ladder when the power goes out, why don't we go to the cellar to take a look at it first?"
Ichijō Mirai's translation: "I think it's more likely that something will happen in the cellar than on the third floor.
The fire went out again and darkness struck, in the brief empty beat between the Red Herring lighter going out and the younger man's lighter coming on, Ichijō Mirai's eyes moved involuntarily and contracted, a little sore from the repeated brightening and darkening.
He raised a hand to touch his eyes and averted his eyes from the firelight, "I guess there's no need to go to the cellar, Mr. Tanaka and the others are back."
In the darkness of the distance, the sound of limping, struggling footsteps approached, and a flashlight glow.
It was Tanaka Kikue's voice that came first, "Mr. Detective?"
The first person she called out to was Ichijō Mirai, instead of the other companions, whom she knew reasonably well, "Are you still in the cafeteria? Ventriloquist, he's hurt."
"The lights just went out and he was trying to climb down into the cellar when he fell off the ladder."
"We're all here," Ichijō Mirai replied, glancing at the lighter duo hugging each other and Suzuki Sonoko, who was cowering in her seat, he stood up and walked over to them, "Is there a medical kit in the villa? Let me help him."
Although the villa owner was crippled, he walked very fast in the darkness, so fast that it looked like a ghost was chasing him, even Tanaka Kikue, a normal walker, could not catch up with him, it was only when he touched Ichijō Mirai that he let out a sudden breath of relief and slowed down, and resumed his crippled man's normal speed with a headache and a hot sweat, "It's good that it's good that you're all here."
Being the owner of the villa, he knew a few things better than the others, "Someone pulled the switch! I just had a look at the power box when I came back with Tanaka, it was vandalized inside, I don't think the power will come back on tonight."
"We had to look, the switch was on our way," Tanaka Kikue added, "We didn't dare to stay for fear that the vandal was still there, but we saw that the wires had been cut and there was a rock hanging from them."
"It's possible that a part of it had been cut earlier and another part fell from a rock."
In other words, anyone can be a vandal.
The owner of the villa, holding a flashlight, unconsciously pointed the light at Ichijō Mirai, a grown man in his forties or fifties with an expectant look in his eyes, "What are we going to do?"
The other three adults also looked at Ichijō Mirai and nodded in unison, "What are we going to do?"
Suzuki Sonoko looks at the cellar duo, then at the lighter duo, and hesitates, nodding her head half a beat too slowly to indicate that she's listening to Ichijō Mirai as well.
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
The detective is also a possible murderer, so why are they all acting like he's so trusting that he can't be the bad guy?
Is he really a good guy?
After a few shaky seconds, he shook his head, "Since there's a device, it's not a good idea to check the perpetrator."
"It's even worse this time of night, and the power's out."
Ichijō Mirai didn't want to investigate a murder like a mother chicken with a string of chicks, he'd had enough of the kids, so he suggested, without changing his expression, "Why don't we pack up everything we need for the night and go upstairs?"
"As long as the door is locked, the room is safe."
Mr. Red Herring froze in the diffused light of the flashlight, and subconsciously 'snapped' his lighter again, "Wh-what? Back to bed?"
Go to your own room?
As a detective, shouldn't you be checking for clues at this time? After a blackout, there could be a murder at any time!
"There's no way to investigate," Ichijō Mirai said without blinking, "Whether I investigate by myself or with everyone else, I'm in the dark, and the darkness will cover the murderer, and the investigative action will give the murderer an opportunity to take advantage of it."
A group of people walking in the dark, even with a few flashlights to hold a group, the murderer still has many ways to create chaos to take advantage of the opportunity to kill, and may also implicate other people, compared to the better to go back to their respective rooms.
"Yes," Suzuki Sonoko nodded, convinced, "so we go back to our rooms now?"
The flashlight illuminated her frequent glances up to the third floor.
She wasn't convinced by reason, she was convinced by whatever Ichijō Mirai had to say, and since it coincided with her desire to go upstairs and find Mouri Ran, she nodded her head in agreement.
After some hesitation, the others agreed back and forth.
So they headed upstairs.
The men's room was on the second floor, and the women's room was on the third.
On the second floor, Ichijō Mirai heard footsteps coming from upstairs and stopped.
The man upstairs also saw the light from downstairs, and before he could see who it was, he could only guess, "Mr. Detective?"
It was the laborer.
His first guess is not his employer, but Ichijō Mirai, came down to see it really is Ichijō Mirai, originally not much expression tense face immediately stretch, although still not much expression, but obviously relaxed, "Detective sir!"
Then he saw the others and nodded in greeting.
Together with the laborer is Kuroda Naoko, who stops groping her way forward and quickly follows, and at first glance sees Ichijō Mirai, immediately surprised, "Detective!"
Ichijō Mirai was a little tempted to look in the mirror to see if he had popped up a [Detective Who Could Never Be A Murderer] green alert on his head, "Well, how are Ms. Mouri and the others doing?"
As soon as he met their trusting eyes, it was as if he had seen the hint: +2 for a wet-eyed, clingy young goat.
The laborer walked quickly to Ichijō Mirai's side, pretending to be the owner of the villa, occupying a short distance from Ichijō Mirai, "It seems that there is a power outage in the villa, and she has to take care of the child, so she didn't come out of her room, so Ms. Kuroda and I came down to see what was going on."
Kuroda Naoko explained why she had left Mouri Ran in her room, "Ms. Mouri said she knew karate and wouldn't open the door without permission, so nothing would happen if she stayed in her room."
Ichijō Mirai responded, translating the decision to 'go back to your homes, find your own moms, and don't expect me to take you adult children or rub up against me in a sticky way' into gentle words.
This decision was fine with the two fresh young sheep.
But most of them had a problem with one thing: how can they go back to their families?
Cold Fact: The probability of being killed while walking in the dark is not great, but not zero.
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
Why are you so afraid of death?
"Okay," he closed his eyes, "I'll see you out."
Live, who can outlive you.
♪
It was after ten when we sent the kids home.
The fire on the drawbridge had subsided, the snow had melted into the night, and the villa was plunged into darkness inside and out, with only the moonlight providing some visibility.
Ichijō Mirai finished checking the windows and doors, and sat down on the sofa, idly turning his bracelet.
Only when the bracelet flashed in protest did he ponder, "What if, I mean what if, while I'm playing the game, my body encounters a fire, can I feel it in the game?"
It took a few seconds for the system to organize a reply: [Yes...]
[No one can stop a criminal from committing a murder.] It's a fair judgment of Ichijō Mirai when it doesn't involve itself, [especially if you have itchy hands.]
So if you're getting a little tired of being the good guy and want to get your hands dirty, you can just log into the game.
Though there's no difference between screwing over people in the game and screwing over people in the real world.
"Don't talk nonsense."
Ichijō Mirai denounced, "Do I look like someone who would commit a crime just because I have an itch?"
"Oh no, yes, yes, that's fine."
"But this time it's not about committing a murder," He turned his bracelet again, adjusting his sitting position on the couch, "but rather, I got a little bit of a new inspiration from the power outage and lights out, and came up with a way to get through the game with a high probability."
He logged into the game.