“Akazukin Chacha?! You wouldn’t even loan it to your parents! You’d tell them to buy their own! The only possible explanation is that the killer took them away!” Ryuzaki insisted, quite forcefully He didn’t stop there.
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“Furthermore, no one on earth would ever want to read only volumes four and nine—I’d bet my jam on it!”
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“If you’re referring to the jam you were eating earlier, a jar of that only goes for around five bucks.” Min Ayahana-sensei would be disappointed.
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“So it follows, Misora, that when the killer removed those two volumes from the room he had some other, completely unrelated reason for doing so.”
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Since it is true that those two volumes are missing, ignoring logic and possibility for the moment and following along with this hypothetical… it’s still strange, isn’t it? I mean, Ryuzaki, this bookshelf…” Was packed full. So tightly that removing a book from it had been rather difficult. If he had really removed two volumes of manga, then there should be that much of a gap... or wait...
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“Ryuzaki. Do you know how many pages there are in volumes four and nine of Akazukin Chacha?”
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“I do. 192 pages and 184 pages.”
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She had not actually expected him to know the answer.. .but 192 plus 184 was 376 pages. Misora glanced along the shelf, looking over the fifty-seven books for a volume the same thickness as 376
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pages of manga. It did not take long. There was only one book that thick on this shelf—Insufficient Relaxation by Permit Winter.
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When she took it off the shelf it did, indeed, turn out to be exactly 376 pages.
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Hopefully Misora flipped through the pages, but she didn’t see anything particularly interesting.
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“What is it, Misora?” “Oh... I was wondering if the killer had put a hook on the shelf to replace the two he took off and if that hook was the real message.
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Assuming that it had really been Believe Bridesmaid who had carefully arranged his books to fill the shelf exactly. It might have been a much more haphazard affair, and the killer had arbitrarily filled it with books taken from another room—and by extension of that line of thought, there was no telling if Akazukin Chacha actually belonged to Believe Bridesmaid in the first place. With the lack of bookmarks, it might all be part of the killer’s message—but so what if it was? If that was the case, it just made it all the more convincing that there was some sort of message here. But if there was nothing unusual about the books themselves, then the whole theory fell apart. It was nothing more than idle fancy.
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“Not a bad idea. No, rather a good idea—nothing else makes sense,” Ryuzaki said, reaching out toward Misora.
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For a moment she thought he wanted to shake her hand, and panicked, but then she realized he just wanted Insufficient Relaxation. She handed it to him. Ryuzaki plucked it from her grasp with his index finger and thumb, and began reading. Speed reading—he went through all 376 pages remarkably quickly.
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It took him less than five minutes to read the entire book.
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Misora was tempted to make him read Natsuhiko Kyogoku.
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“I see!”
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“Eh? You found something?”
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“No. There’s absolutely nothing here. Don’t look at me like that. I swear, I’m not joking. This is just an ordinary entertainment novel, not a message, or even a metaphor like the Wara Ningyo. And of course, there are no letters of any kind hidden between the pages, nor anything scribbled in the margins.”
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“The margins?”
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“Yes, there was nothing in the margins but page numbers.”
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“Page numbers?” Misora echoed. Page numbers... numbers? Numbers, like... Roman numerals?
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“Ryuzaki, assuming those cuts on the victim’s chest were Roman numerals, what did they say?”
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“16, 59, 1423, 159, 13, 7, 582, 724, 1001, 40, 51, and 31.” Good memory. Didn’t even need to see the picture again. Nearly photographic memory—first the number of pages in the books, and now this.
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“What about them?”
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“I was just wondering if they were pointing at the pages in this hook, but... two of the numbers were four digits. The book’s only 176 pages long. They don’t match.”
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“Yes... no, Misora, what if it wraps around? For example, 476 could be seen as 376 plus one hundred, and indicate page 100.”
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“...Meaning what?”
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“I don’t know. But let’s try it out...16 is easy, page 16. 59, 1423, 159, 13, 7, 582, 724, 1001, 40, 51, 31...”
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He narrowed his dark-rimmed eyes.
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Not even looking at the book. Seriously? Even at the speed he was reading, he’d managed to memorize the entire contents perfectly? Was that even possible? Could he really do that? Either way, Misora could only stand and wait.
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“...l see.”
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“That there’s nothing there?”
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“No... there is something there. Something very specific, Misora.” Ryuzaki handed Insufficient Relaxation back to Misora. “Open it to page 16,” he said.
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“Okay.”
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“What is the first word on that page?”
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“Quadratic.”
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“Next is page 59. The first word on that page?”
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“Ukulele.”
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“Next is page 295. 1423 wraps around three times, and hits 295 on the fourth lap. First word is?”
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“Tenacious.”
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They continued. 159 was page 159, 13 was page 13, 7 was page 7, 582 was page 206, 725 was page 348, 1001 was page 249, 40 was page 40, 51 was page 51, and 31 was page 31, and on each page, Misora read out the first word. In order: “rabble,”“table,”“egg,”“arbiter,”
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“equable,”“thud,”“effect,”“elsewhere,” and “name.”
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“So.”
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“So... what about it?”
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“Take the first letter of each word.”
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“The first letter? Um...”
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Misora went back through each page again. She did not have a bad memory, but was unable to remember twenty words at one go. At least, not without being warned in advance that she would be required to do so.
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“Q-U-T-R-T-E-A-E-T-E-E-N. . .qutr tea teen? What?”
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“Very similar to the second victim’s name, don’t you think?”
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“I suppose...”
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The second victim. The thirteen-year old girl. Quarter Queen.
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“There is a vague resemblance... Quarter Queen... only four letters are different.”
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“Yes. However Ryuzaki said, reluctantly. “Four letters out of twelve is too many. One third of them are wrong. If even one letter is different, then the entire theory falls apart. Unless it matches perfectly, it’s not worth calling a message. I thought there might be something there, but it may well be just a coincidence...”
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“But... for a coincidence...”
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It was so obvious.
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How could it be?
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It had to be intentional.
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Intentional... or abnormal.
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“Still, Misora... if it doesn’t match, it doesn’t match. We were very close, but...”
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“No, Ryuzaki. Think about it. All four wrong numbers match up with numbers over 376. They’re all numbers where we had to wrap around.”
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She flipped through the pages, checking them again. Page 295, first word: tenacious, first letter: T, second letter E, third letter N, fourth letter.. A.
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“Three times through, and on the fourth lap… we don’t use the first letter, but the fourth letter. Not T, but A. And with 582, and arbiter, once around and on the second lap gives us R instead of A. That turns Qutrtea into Quarter.”
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By the same logic, “equable” was 724, so one time through, on the second lap, the second letter: Q.
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And with 1001 and “thud”—not 1’, but U. That made Eteen into Queen. Quarter Queen.
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L had been right.
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The killer had left a message.
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The cuts on the body, the two missing books—the killer had left a message. Just like the crossword puzzle he’d sent to the police, a message describing his next victim...
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“Nice work, Misora,” Ryuzaki said, unruffled. “Very good deduction. I would never have thought of it.”
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If we must discuss why L so adamantly refused to reveal himself, we can explain it very simply: doing so was dangerous. Very dangerous. While the world leaders should make efforts to ensure the safety of all the finest minds, not only for detectives, the fact is that tile current societal systems do not allow for this, and L believed he had no choice but to protect his mind under his own power. By simple arithmetic, L’s ability in 2002 was the equivalent of five ordinary investigative bureaus, and seven intelligence agencies (and by the time he faced off against Kira, those numbers had leapt upward several more notches). This is easy to think of as a reason to respect and admire someone, but let me say this as clearly as possible: that much ability in one human is extremely dangerous. Modern danger management techniques rely heavily on diffusing the risk, but his very existence was the exact opposite. In other words, if someone was planning to commit a crime, they could greatly increase their chances of getting away with it by simply killing L before they began. That was why L hid his identity.
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Not because he was shy, or because he never left the house. To ensure his own safety. For a detective of L’s ability, self-preservation and the preservation of world peace were one and the same, and it would not be correct to describe his actions as cowardly or self-centered. While I don’t personally relish the thought of comparing them, if Kira had had the ability to kill someone by writing their name in a notebook only then he would hardly have publicized that fact for exactly the same reasons. The most intelligent people disguise the fact that they are intelligent. Wise men do not wear nametags. The more people talk about their own skills, the more desperate they are—their work should speak for itself.