No two people can ever fully comprehend each other. It’s simply a question of whether or not you can convince yourself that you can, whether or not you can delude yourself into believing that it’s possible.
Sure is, nodded Aikawa. “So I’ll have to stick to spouting vague approximations based on my best guesses. I suspect she had it all worked out from the start. She inserted me into her machinations by getting me involved, getting me on her side, and pulling the wool over my eyes. She took care of the Director and the rest of the staff first, before sounding the alarm over her own escape… Oh, and FYI, they discovered a ton of dismembered corpses in the staff room. About thirty-seven people’s worth.”
“─”
I already knew she’d killed them, but to hear the actual number said out loud was enough to take my breath away. Thirty-seven people─plus Shiogi and Tamamo and Noa Origami makes forty. Mr. No Longer Human didn’t even kill a third that many last month.
To be perfectly honest, once the number of murder victims exceeds about a dozen, I cease to be able to render a normal value judgment. Quite the reverse, in fact: a certain admiration for Hime-chan even started to well up in me, for pulling that off inside a closed-off space like their school. Which I know is totally inappropriate.
One person in the locked room of the Director’s office, thirty-eight altogether in the locked room of the faculty building─and forty altogether in the locked room of Hang ’Em High.
A closed-off space. Impossible to tell from the outside what’s happening on the inside. Because it was a warzone─because it was a closed-off warzone.
It was probably a piece of cake.
Locked rooms are locked rooms precisely because they’re closed off, but who knew it could be so different─depending on whether they’re closed off to keep things in, or to keep things out.
It’s why this happened, why she did those things.
Can you approve of that behavior?
Well, can you? Mr. Defective Product?
“Her Zigzag was originally intended for crowd-control. It’s not a killing technique, it’s for restraining people. Something like a thread is ultimately more effective than rope for tying someone up. So she restrained them, then chopped them up with a chainsaw. Lessee, what else. She used the walkie-talkie to contact Hagihara on the Director’s dedicated frequency and informed her that ‘Ichihime Yukariki has escaped.’ Her plan was discovered around the time you infiltrated the school, not because she blew it. She revealed it to them herself.”
“She expected it to be you.”
“But I sent you in ahead of me. Which Ichihime dealt with as well as she could’ve…but it did make things a little more precarious for her. She couldn’t use Zigzag in front of you, so when they took you two by surprise, she was captured.”
Is…that why Hime-chan had been so insistent about staying in that classroom? But I was already taking action even as she tried to veto it. I was definitely an unexpected element for her.
“And I went to have a chat with the Director, just as she guessed I would… That part would’ve gone the same whether you were there or not. With her flight already revealed, I was even surer to head to Noa’s spot than I would’ve been if it hadn’t come out yet. Haha, the little fucker really read my mind.”
“So Hime-chan had a certain facility with vocal mimicry and mindreading herself.”
“Sure. Though it’s not like she was my disciple or anything. So we were together─and this is crucial─we were together when we discovered the Director’s body. Then she could play the role of the victim, framed for the crime.”
“But that’s a dangerous game…”
“That danger worked in Ichihime’s favor too, I guess. Same as hiding under the desk. The more of that she did, the less I would suspect her. I did think the way Noa was killed resembled Zigzag…but maybe it was a fake, a copycat? It gave me all kinds of things to waste my time pondering.”
“So you knew about ‘Zigzag.’”
“Yup. I didn’t tell you about it since Ichihime seemed to want to keep it secret. The fact that it was her trump card aside, I didn’t think it was the kind of thing she’d want everyone to know. But how did you figure out that she was a weaver? Tamamo’s death was one thing, but the person who killed the Director didn’t need to be one.”
“It all came into focus simultaneously for me. Like a chain reaction. I guess once I figure out one thing, it all falls into place. That’s just the kind of person I am: one is all, and all is one. Conversely, that means that until I figure it out, I don’t understand anything at all… Something did trigger it, though. Hime-chan tried to cover her tracks, but it just seemed unnatural that someone would carry around all those threads if they weren’t a weaver. She may have had no choice but to use her lines if she wanted to kill Tamamo without my realizing she’d done so… Still, it was rash.”
Though maybe she just didn’t take me seriously. On that score, I have to admit that Hime-chan wasn’t so crazy after all. If I hadn’t worked backwards from the solution to the locked room, I probably never would’ve figured it out.
“Also, there was the fact that Shiogi was so damn cautious. Her ‘tactics’ were way too elaborate for dealing with any old washout. Like, why not just rely on her material advantage? The answer, of course, being that trying to overwhelm ‘Zigzag’ with superior numbers would be the worst possible strategy.”
“Hmmm.”
“Plus…there’s something fishy about the idea that a washout would try and bamboozle the one and only Jun Aikawa. A nonsense user like me wouldn’t make much of an enemy for the world’s strongest, and neither would plain old ‘Ichihime Yukariki,’ even if she could be her friend. And ‘Zigzag’ was the only likely spot left on the roster for Hime-chan to fill.”
And─above all.
The most important clue came from my conviction that none of the characters around me could ever just be cute or weak or pitiful and nothing more.
“Well, there you go. But the part about being a washout wasn’t a lie, ya know. Apart from that one skill…she had nothing else going for her.”
“Of course, the fact that you knew about it means…that Zigzag was a skill she acquired before enrolling at the academy…doesn’t it, Jun.”
“Got me there. It was five years ago. I had a friend who was a failed weaver, nickname of ‘Zigzag.’ It wasn’t originally meant as a compliment, you with me? Anyway, the two of us did a certain job together. On that occasion we rescued the twelve-year-old Ichihime Yukariki…and since then, Ichihime has idolized the two of us. Me, I didn’t pay too much attention to her, but…”
Was that also when she sustained the injury to her frontal lobe? But that wasn’t the question I needed to ask. There was only one thing to ask now.
“Was the person’s name Yuma Shisei, by any chance?”
“Huh?” Aikawa looked up in surprise. “You know about her? It’s not like she’s all that well-known.”
“No…not really. Anyway, she…”
“Yup. She was Ichihime’s master.” Aikawa smiled cynically. “And a former teacher at Hang ’Em High. Thanks to that connection, Ichihime started going to a middle school affiliated with the place, and here we are. Now, back to the topic at hand. Let’s see, how far had I gotten? Oh right. Her decision to be our fellow suspect. Once again she was right on the money: she figured that even with the door locked, I’d find some way to force my way in… Dammit, she was always a sneaky little minx. You know more about what happened next than I do, so I’ll leave it at that.”
“She didn’t want us to think she was the one who killed the Director… But what about the mountain of corpses she’d left in the staff room?”
“She must’ve figured I’d assume that if she wasn’t the one who killed the Director, someone else must’ve killed everyone else too. But that was where she took it too far. Once you and Ichihime were gone, what the hell could I do but come looking for you, so I left the Director’s office as well. But I decided to stop by the staff room and say a quick hello. I headed down to the floor below…and holy shit. However abnormal Hang ’Em High might be─Ichihime Yukariki was the only person there who could possibly do that on her own.”
Was─that when it all came out? Her crimes laid bare not by suspicion but by trust. But she could never have let the staff live. In which case Hime-chan’s strategy was blown from the start.
…Or.
No, that’s probably not how it went. Probably Aikawa─hadn’t realized the truth in any real sense until she overheard me and Hime-chan’s conversation in the hallway. Whatever she herself may think, I’m pretty sure that’s how it went.
That’s the kind of person she is.
“But be it the locked room or anything else, I can’t believe it would’ve been opaque. To anyone but you, Jun.”
“I was the only one she needed to fool. Otherwise she wouldn’t have had any reason to kill you…or would she? You are an irritating son of a bitch.”
“…But if she had never summoned you to the school in the first place, you’d never have found out. Choosing to actively deceive you instead of holding onto a secret that might or might not be revealed… Talk about ‘getting caught in your own web.’”
“Thing is, she made a promise, a long time ago. When she became Shisei’s disciple. That she would never use Zigzag to kill.”
“But that technique…oh. Originally it was meant for restraining people, for self-defense, huh?”
So that’s why she had to hide the truth from Aikawa, in particular. It probably wasn’t the only reason but went some way towards explaining that bit. A motive for murder is always a complicated tangle of different threads, hard to put into words…but it seemed we could safely say that one of those threads was Hime-chan’s master, Yuma Shisei, and another was Jun Aikawa.