Huh? Yubiwa was presenting a theory?
He’s so taciturn that I assumed he’d stick to the role of audience at this little gathering─but now he was about to bust out an eloquent speech?
I was suddenly on the edge of my seat, but my hopes were dashed a moment later─because he just muttered, “That’s not all of them.”
A mere five words.
Then he added, “There are thirty-three more, at least.”
“What? What do you mean?” I asked reflexively, but he’d already returned to his usual silent self─it appeared no further explanation would be forthcoming.
I looked in turn at the delinquent, Mr. Bare-Legs, and Sakiguchi to see if they’d understood, but they looked even more confused than they’d been during my own bonkers presentation─Sotoin was the only exception.
“Aha! So that’s it!” he cried, slapping his knee, although I seriously questioned the depth of his comprehension.
But one must never doubt one’s leader.
Reassuring myself that he alone must have caught the gist of the child genius’s theory, I asked him for an explanation.
At least Sotoin seemed to have some telepathic ability, which was better than the child genius’s steadfast silence.
“Dear me, young Dojima, you didn’t understand? Sosaku said, ‘That’s not all of them. There are thirty-three more, at least.’”
“Right, right. And?”
“And? And that’s all…”
That’s all?
Speaking up had only set me back.
But judging by what the loyal Sakiguchi said next, the leader’s words were gospel even when he was simply passing along a message from the child genius.
“Indeed, there is no reason to believe the set of paintings we discovered is complete. You couldn’t be more right.”
A little too loyal to elementary school students.
Or was his mind still miles away?
“If, as Sosaku suggests, there are another thirty-three paintings in this series, then those missing canvases might include Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Munch’s The Scream.”
“But those were the only canvases in the crawl space, Mr. Vice Squad… I mean, Vice President.”
“I can’t believe that was an innocent slip of the tongue.”
I thought I could get away with it because he was spacing out, but apparently he wasn’t that spaced out.
“Anyway, you’re right. But who’s to say the crawl space was the artist’s only hiding spot?”
“Good point. Dojima’ll just have to poke around in all the crawl spaces in the school…” the delinquent said, stroking his chin─although I’m pretty sure it was just to hide his grin, not because he was lost in thought.
What the hell was he suggesting?
If the leader latched onto that idea, I’d be screwed.
“They don’t necessarily have to be hidden in a crawl space, though!” I added hastily. “I mean, they could be under the floor!”
“You’d be doing pretty much the same thing either way, considering how the school’s put together,” the delinquent retorted.
Which was true.
“I can see how there might be more paintings, but Yubiwa, how did you come up with ‘at least thirty-three more’? Isn’t that a little too specific?”
Just as I expected, he completely ignored my question.
After dauntlessly attempting to talk to him so many times, I was starting to enjoy being ignored by Yubiwa. Was something wrong with me?
I guess those few mumbled words, which hardly qualified as a presentation, had exhausted his capacity to speak for the duration of the case.
If I may be allowed to interject a few words as narrator: I think it would be best to break Yubiwa’s limit of two lines of dialogue per volume as soon as possible.
“Thirty-three paintings… You said ‘at least’ thirty-three, right, Sosaku? If that’s the minimum, what’s the maximum?”
The child genius didn’t answer his classmate Mr. Bare-Legs’ question either, but while he looked completely expressionless to me, the leader apparently picked up on some kind of reaction amid his silence.
“Sosaku says he can’t even begin to estimate the upper limit,” Sotoin interpreted. “It could be a hundred paintings, or it could be a thousand.”
A thousand!
That went beyond exaggeration and into what had to be joke territory. But the child genius didn’t so much as crack a smile─he was apparently perfectly serious.
“I kinda feel like you just gave us the conclusion without telling us how you got there. You got some basis for saying we didn’t find all the paintings?”
“Sosaku the Artiste has no proof. The theory appears to be based on his intuition as an artist─which is why he can say no more at this point,” Sotoin said, sheltering the child genius from the storm of the delinquent’s question.
At this point, he was acting less like an interpreter for the artist and more like a spokesman.
What kind of a leader was he, anyway?
My theory was that the artist had simply painted what he or she saw, and along the same lines, I suppose Yubiwa simply said what popped into his head─like a true artist.
Honestly, I would have appreciated if he’d tied it together into something more like an actual theory… But maybe that’s the whole reason he’s an artist, because he isn’t good at that sort of thing.
Upon reflection, the child genius’s theory provided a clean explanation for the mystery Sotoin had raised─that is, the absence of the Mona Lisa─but it in no way solved the mystery that was uppermost in all our minds.
Which is to say, he’d completely ignored the question of why the artist painted these pictures.
I wanted to ask him his thoughts on the subject, but I knew it would be pointless─and I had to be careful about getting too deep into the depraved game of being ignored by a younger student.
So I decided to switch gears and focus on Sakiguchi’s theory─the fact that he’d secured the final spot despite having his head in the clouds was further proof of what a master speaker he was.
Or so I thought, but his long face didn’t exactly shout, “I’m raring to go!”
“Ah, well. It’s my turn already? Where shall I begin, I wonder─yes, that will do. To make a long story short, I have succeeded in confirming the identity of the person who painted the pictures we discovered in the crawl space.”
If I’d been sipping a cup of tea at that moment, even one specially blended to suit my tastes, I would have sprayed it all over the place─that’s how explosive this revelation was.
He’d identified the artist?
Wasn’t that the same as solving the mystery?
He’d said it so casually, but he might as well have topped it off with a Q. E. D.!
His long face hadn’t lost its gloomy tinge, though─not at all the air of a great detective who had just discovered the truth.
“The artist’s name is Kowako Towai. She used to be an art teacher at this school.”