“Do you have dreams for the future, Shiogi?”
“Dreams, no. The future holds only reality for me. So if I can manage to keep on like this until I ‘graduate,’ I think I’ll probably get a job with Rule.”
“Get a job, sure… Who do you think you’re kidding? Where does that lead, to becoming Zhuge Liang? Or Hannibal? I gotta say, I think a girl’s happiness lies elsewhere.”
“Whoa. That’s a horribly outdated opinion. What, are you telling me to become a housewife?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s clear that if you go somewhere like that, you’ll end up unhappy. Which is your prerogative… Ultimately you’re the only one who’ll ever know what happiness means for you─but more importantly.” As we went up the stairs to the top floor and walked the halls, I asked Shiogi another question, stalling pointlessly. Though that said, it was something I really did want to ask her, something that interested me. “If I really am leading you to where Aikawa is right now, what do you intend to do? I don’t believe for a second that a tactician like yourself would challenge humanity’s strongest without some kind of plan, but I also don’t think there’s any trick you can pull against a one-woman Dirty Dozen like her.”
Relying on some kind of material superiority won’t work against Aikawa. And you certainly can’t get to her with underhandedness or unfairness. Even this charlatan can’t come up with a single way of hurting her. As I said to Shiogi, Aikawa might have the good grace to be a little shocked if she found out I’d “betrayed” her, but she’d quickly transform it into positive energy. That’s how mighty she is.
“Trick, no─stratagem, yes,” said Shiogi, nonetheless brimming with confidence. “Overkill Red may be the world’s strongest contractor, but that doesn’t make her the world’s strongest person─and that’s what I’m going to exploit.”
“Hmm.”
“My opponent may be the world’s strongest, but my name is Shiogi Hagihara. The Devil himself has to take a number to see me. I don’t play fair, so watch as I make a surprise attack from plain sight.”
What did that mean, was she planning to outwit Aikawa? Was she looking for a back door? That woman doesn’t have any doors at all, let alone a weak point or any inconsistencies, so it seemed like a pretty tall order─
And that’s when I realized. Of course. That locked room. My thoughts returned to it. That’s right, no matter how─I mean it, no matter how─meticulously the culprit set up that locked-room scenario, the opposing force was Jun Aikawa. Jun Aikawa has no weak points, no inconsistencies─and for her, nothing is impossible or incredible. Only illogical. Faced with some outdated locked-room mystery, Jun Aikawa’s your woman. Whether the truth turns out to be that “the door wasn’t actually locked” or something else, it doesn’t make a difference. Nothing gets by Jun Aikawa.
And yet, Aikawa had yet to unravel anything.
“How…”
How can that be? Isn’t that the most illogical thing of all? For humanity’s strongest to stumble at such a low hurdle has to mean that someone’s cheating. A master detective who can’t solve the case, a serial killer who doesn’t kill people, a nonsense user who acts on behalf of strangers─the whole thing was positively overflowing with contradictions.
And if so─no, precisely because it’s so. Shouldn’t that dismembered corpse yield an obvious answer? The body of Noa Origami, chopped up with a chainsaw─zigzagged.
Reconstruction…approximate expression…adaptation…and finally compilation.
Then, my thoughts arrived at something even more important. At a deception so overpowering that something on the order of a locked room vanished into obscurity. Working backward from the solution, I arrived at something more fundamental.
Shiogi’s response when I’d asked her about the truth behind Tamamo’s death.
Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t possess that kind of technique. Only “Zigzag” could pull it off─that “Don’t be ridiculous.”
As if I’d muddled something she took it for granted I should know. Come to think of it, Tamamo had sounded that way too. If the dissonance there, if the significance of our crossed wires─was that there was no such student as Yuma Shisei─
If.
I already knew Zigzag─if I considered not why I hadn’t realized, but why I couldn’t have realized, then─the lies.
Deception.
“I-It can’t be.”
This wasn’t my voice, but Shiogi’s. She’d stopped somewhere behind me─and had turned as white as a sheet. Her eyes were vacant. She looked aghast─despairing. Confused by this sudden change that had come over her, my thought process ground to a halt.
“What’s wrong, Shiogi?”
“Th-That quiz─was it about the Director?”
“─!”
Fierce regret. Damn─she’d figured it out.
Of course she had. If someone like me could arrive at a given “solution,” there was no reason why Shiogi Hagihara, the best tactician at this academy, couldn’t get there too. And I was the one who’d given her the necessary materials to do so. Working backwards from her own words, and from my attitude and that less-than-innocent quiz─she’d figured out that there had been an incident, and what that incident was. Inverse operation was the tactician’s forte, not the charlatan’s. No matter how many times I’d reminded myself that this girl was an expert─I had still underestimated her. To be able to figure it all out from such scant information.
What a mind.
A mind so misfortunate, it made me want to cry.
“Bu─no way. The Director─the walkie-talkie.”
Moving like a revenant, a sort of half-smile on her face. With tottering steps, devoid of her usual flowing grace─Shiogi came towards me. Almost as if she was looking to me for salvation. As if she wanted me to take her in my arms.
I was unsure of what to do. Lie? If I lied to her now, would she buy it? Even if I’d succeeded at manipulating her movements, could I manipulate this truth that Shiogi had discovered? No, it wasn’t a question of whether or not I could─it was a question of whether or not I would.
Would I lie to her more than I already had?
Even if it wasn’t nonsense.
“Tell me…is my─” Shiogi paused, barely able to catch her breath. “Is my mother─”
“Yeah. She was murdered, a good long while ago.”
The charlatan didn’t lie.