The top drawer was locked. I looked closely and saw that there were marks that seemed to have been made with metal along the surface, as if someone had tried to force it open.
“A key...” I gulped.
I put my hand to my chest and took a deep breath.
Calm down.
“This is definitely... worth trying, yeah.”
I took a glance at Sarai, who was still waiting outside the room...
...and took the gold tooth key out of my pocket.
That’s right. This is what I’d been looking for. How many locks had I tried since that day? And none of them had fit. But, I’d realized...
The answer was inside Dr. Hashigami’s house. In other words, right here.
It was worth coming here after all! Now I could prove my innocence! With a mixture of joy and nervousness, I stuck the gold tooth key into the lock.
I turned it slowly—
“Huh...?”
And it didn’t move at all.
Of course. I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the sizes of the key and the keyhole didn’t match at all. The key was way too small.
“I guess it was too much to hope for...”
I had gotten my hopes up, which only made it worse. I felt like slamming my forehead into the desk.
“They say truth’s stranger than fiction, but that’s not true. Miracles don’t just happen in the real world.”
But still, this drawer was locked. That was a fact.
There must be a clue inside. It was my only hope at this point.
So I couldn’t give up.
Once, a long time ago, I’d hidden the ero-doujin I’d bought at Tora no Ara from my mom behind a drawer. By now I was more careful, and carefully switched them between multiple hiding spots. But because of that, I knew a lot about drawers.
I decided to ignore the locked top drawer, and see what was in the two below it. Both of them were empty.
I took the second and third drawers out of the desk. This made it easier to get at the top one. If I was lucky, I might be able to reach around and grab whatever was in there.
I stuck my head into the empty spot below the drawers and looked up.
“W-What the heck?”
The bottom of the the first drawer had been destroyed. There was nothing but empty space there.
Someone had tried the same approach, then destroyed the bottom of the drawer and taken whatever was in there.
Whatever the killer had been after must have been in here.
Evidently whoever had ransacked this room had been a lot more careful than I thought.
“I was too late...”
There was nothing left here now.
I sighed.
I was just an amateur. Just a high school student. Just a NEET god. There was no way I could find a clue like a detective in a mystery novel.
After this room had been ransacked, Sarai’s family and the police would’ve searched it thoroughly. So of course, in a sense this was to be expected.
So why’d I get my hopes up? It was useless. No matter what I did, I wasn’t going to find anything. The killer’s group wasn’t stupid enough to leave behind any evidence that someone like me could find, and the cops weren’t idiots.
In the face of this obvious and inevitable result, I just felt exhausted.
I didn’t want to move. So much had happened today that I was tired.
I couldn’t take any more. I should just go home and hide in my room. And then I could just wait for them to find the real killer. I could just wait and live in fear of the cops coming to visit. I could skip school. I wouldn’t be able to graduate, but that didn’t matter.
I gave up and just lay down on the floor right there.
“It doesn’t matter.... None of this matters...”
I almost cried when the thought came to me. I tried to wipe away the tears and calm myself down.
I found myself looking up at the ceiling. There were lots of little, tiny holes.
It was the kind of stuff you saw in the music room at school. I think it was for soundproofing. Or were they tiny holes to let air pass? I couldn’t remember seeing them in a house before.
But the holes in a music room ceiling were placed at regular intervals. The ones here were different. Several of them were filled with putty or something. It looked really bad, like something a child had done as a prank.
“To keep the rain from leaking in...? Nah, no way.”
Did they hire a contractor to do this? Like maybe he was supposed to fill all the holes, but stopped halfway through for some reason?
“That ceiling’s weird.”
I started to count the holes. There was a character in JoJo who would calm himself by counting prime numbers. Maybe I could calm myself down that way.
But I quickly started to feel a little sick. My vision was starting to dim.
The dots on the ceiling were lined up in rows, but several of them were filled.
I squinted and saw what looked like a face... maybe.
Didn’t I used to play this game all the time as a kid?
I focused on three random holes and stared at them intently. That was enough. They instantly resolved themselves into the parts of a face — two eyes and a mouth.
“Right, right. This is the so-called simulacra effect. I know.”
Sarai had given a lecture on it before at Kirikiri Basara.
What a stupid-looking face.
“Hey there, ceiling-chan.” I said, jokingly. “Did you see what they took from this room? If you did, can you tell me?’
“The answer’s--BZZZTT--right in front of you! --ZZZzZZ--How come you can’t see it? Are you stupid?”
“Uwah!” I leaped up onto my feet.
I was hearing a voice. That was impossible...
“A-A talking ceiling?!”
And it was a girl’s voice, too! I was the only one in this room. Unless Sarai was outside with a voice changer, there was no reason I should be hearing a girl’s voice.
“Ceilings don’t talk. --ZZZzZZTT--You idiot.”
“...”
Wait a second. Wait just a second.
This slightly muffled, bratty voice...
“Zonko?! You scared me. I’m hearing a lot of static for some reason.” I opened the case to the Skysensor. The power was off. “But why did you decide to start talking now?”
“I don’t--ZZZzzz--have time to talk about it.”
“Huh? Not again.”
“The old ghost--zzzzz--lady is--Zzzz--gonna come to this room soon.”
“Ghost?” When she said that, I felt a cold shiver run down my back.
That thing I’d seen downstairs that looked like an old woman in a white kimono. Was that really...?
“Well--ZZZZ--I’m joking about her being--zz--a ghost.”
“You’re joking?”
Huh? What? What’s going on?
It felt like the static was getting worse.
“That old lady is--zzzZZZ--that four-eyes’s--zzz--mom.”
His mom was an old lady?
“What are you talking about?”
“All the stress must’ve aged her that badly. BZzzz--but that’s a sign of how scared--zzz--she is of other people. She might think--ZZzzz--that you’re a thug--zzz--who’s come to raid this room.”
“I got permission from Sarai—”
“There’s no time to explain that--zzzzZZZZZzz--listen carefully. You can pretend to be a detective, but in that world--zzzz--in the real world--zzz--you won’t find anything.”
“W-What are you trying to say? Do you know what it is I’m looking for?”
No. That wasn’t it.
“You know what was hidden in this room, don’t you?!” “You’re already a part of this--zzzzzzBZZZzz--you can’t help it.”
“Just explain things. This isn’t a movie or a TV show, so instead of giving me hints, give me the answer!”
“I just told you. The answer is--zzzZZ--that ceiling--zzzzzZZZZ--that you’re staring at.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything!”
All those holes on the ceiling—
Irregular dots—
A soundproofed ceiling for a music room—
A failed attempt at fixing rain leaks—
A kid’s prank, filling them with putty—
Putty?
Suddenly I found myself looking at the lonely pen holder on the desk. I’d been ignoring it until a moment ago, but for some reason I was noticing it now. It was filled with red and black pencils — and a tube of putty.
“Is this ceiling...”
It wasn’t a half-assed repair job? In other words, the professor himself, not a contractor, had done this.
Which meant that the holes were filled deliberately!
“Zonko! Some of the holes are filled up! Do you mean this is a message the professor left?”
“You’re actually smart--zzzzzBBBZZzzzz--for once today. It’s--zzzzzz--code.”
“Code? CODE again? You mean these rows of dots?”
“Figure out the rest for yoursel--zzzBZZZZ--don’t poya-poya--zzzzz--the old woman--ghost is--BZzzzBZzzz--”
“Hey, wait!”
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzz-” The voice disappeared, leaving only static.
“Zonko!”
What the hell was going on here? She just showed up, talked for a while, gave me a bunch of orders, and then disappeared without answering any of my questions! The room fell silent again.
I listened for a while, but I didn’t hear Zonko.
I looked back up at the ceiling.
There was no way I could solve this.
“I’m not even a detective.” What had the professor meant when he’d left CODE as a dying message?
What kind of elaborate message did he need to hide with those letters...?
“Hmm?”
In other words, “CODE” meant...
Something encrypted to dots...
“Are these letters?”
“--zzzz--Not--zzz--bad!”
“Wait, you’re still here?!”