Blood, Blood, Blood
Blood. Blood. Blood. Crimson splatters covered everything in a grotesque spray. Before it all, Ophelia sat collapsed, tears dripping steadily from her eyes. On the floor lay Ariel, completely still. No pulse. Blood streamed endlessly from her mouth.
Leah approached slowly and pressed her ear to Ariel’s back. After a moment, she shook her head.
“No—!”
Ophelia toppled backward as if she’d fainted. Terin caught her naturally and carried her out of the room.
“…I’ll head down to the first floor.”
“…Yeah.”
Terin left with a dazed expression, clearly just as shaken as the rest of us. The first murder. The girls’ reactions varied, but every single one of them was in shock. I was no different.
It didn’t feel real. The girl I’d seen alive just that morning now lay lifeless on the ground.
…
Leah approached Ariel’s body and clasped her hands together as if in prayer. Then she began carefully examining the surroundings.
“…What are you doing?”
“Did you forget? Rule Seven.”
“Rule Seven…”
“If you don’t want us all dead in three hours, you’d better pull yourself together.”
Three hours. Far too short a time to waste on grief.
“…Shouldn’t we start by checking alibis?” Maria spoke up. Her expression wasn’t great either—she was clearly affected—but she was the one managing to stay relatively calm.
Clarice simply stared at Ariel’s corpse with an unreadable face. Evangeline, meanwhile, was trembling violently in the corner.
“This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong…”
“Let’s leave Evangeline for now. I was trapped in Room F when some device suddenly activated.”
“Yeah, that checks out. I was moving together with Terin and Aina.”
Maria nodded at Leah’s testimony, then spoke confidently.
“I was alone.”
“…You don’t actually think that sounds good in this situation, do you?”
“But it’s the truth.”
“…Where were you before that?”
“I was originally heading to Room F… but it was locked, so I went to Room H instead.”
Room H, huh.
“Why not Room G?”
“There was already someone in Room G.”
Maria made no effort to hide her reluctance to encounter people directly. Leah and I exchanged glances and nodded. We’d set that aside for now.
Finally, we turned to Clarice. She opened her mouth with a blank expression.
“I was in Room A.”
“…Why?”
“I like dolls.”
The abrupt answer made Leah tilt her head suspiciously, but Clarice simply closed her mouth again, looking as though she had no further thoughts on the matter.
“Terin was probably with Leah.”
“Well, we were together at first, but we split up after checking Room G. She said she wanted to look for you.”
“…I see.”
That meant we couldn’t pinpoint where anyone had been right before the murder. The girls had scattered more than I’d expected. I frowned.
“Evangeline.”
“…Y-yes? Yes.”
Though still shaking, Evangeline had regained enough composure to nod.
“Didn’t you say you weren’t coming up to the third floor?”
“Y-you’re suspecting me?!”
“…Of course not.”
If I were actually suspicious of her, I wouldn’t have approached the topic like this. We were still in the information-gathering stage, not the accusation stage. From my past-life experience, it was better to ask these kinds of girls directly. Beating around the bush out of misplaced consideration usually just made them clam up.
“I just want to know. Why you came to the third floor, and what you did while you were here.”
…
Evangeline stared at me with distrustful eyes for a moment before speaking quietly.
“On the third floor… I got scared being alone on the first floor.”
“Mm, I see.”
“Yes. So I came up. While I was looking around Room B, I heard a scream.”
“I see.”
“I… I also saw Sister Clarice in Room A…”
So that was it. Had she really stayed in Room A the whole time? Or was there another reason? Maybe she’d found some secret there. I watched Clarice quietly, but she remained expressionless, simply observing Ariel’s body.
“…Well, I think we’ve heard from everyone except Terin and Ophelia.”
“We’ll ask them later… For now, let’s examine the scene.”
“Right.”
The one small mercy was that the crime scene remained perfectly preserved.
“Sorry, Ariel.”
I clasped my hands in a brief prayer, then gently opened her mouth. A pool of blood had collected inside.
“No defensive wounds.”
“Instant kill, or killed by someone she trusted?”
“Looks like the former.”
I pointed at the sword still embedded in her back. Ariel had died face-down, the blade driven straight into the part of her back where her heart would be. A journal lay scattered in front of her.
“So while she was reading her journal, someone stabbed her from behind in one strike?”
“Seems that way.”
“What about magic? Was magic involved?”
“…No.”
When I shook my head, Leah clicked her tongue.
“…Where did the sword even come from?”
“There’s Room B.”
“Ah.”
Leah nodded, looking as if she hadn’t considered that. Maria frowned slightly, apparently having overlooked it too.
“I thought they were just models.”
“Every single one had a sharpened edge.”
“…Hmm.”
Leah examined the sword once more and nodded.
“But wait. This door. If the killer opened it and came in, there should have been some sound, right?”
“Probably.”
“Then wouldn’t Ariel have reacted?”
“…Not necessarily.”
Maria shook her head. Leah tilted her head in surprise.
“Why not?”
“Ariel wasn’t the type to be wary of others.”
“Mm.”
Leah frowned at Maria’s tone, which suggested personal experience. I spoke up quietly while watching them.
“Are we sure the killer came through the door?”
“Huh? There’s no other way in besides the door.”
“There are devices.”
“Devices?”
At the word, both of them made small sounds of realization and nodded. I had been trapped by one, but it was possible that devices in other rooms connected to different rooms.
“Did anyone notice a device activating while they were in another room?”
“M-me.”
“I was outside.”
…
“Clarice, you were in Room A too, right?”
Clarice nodded at my question.
“…I wasn’t planning to leave, so I didn’t see where the door connected.”
“Hmm.”
“R-Room B was connected to Room Eee.”
I nodded at that.
“This is Room D, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a room connected to Room D?”
“There might be.”
“…It would be nice if we could check when the device activates.”
Leah was frowning in thought. Clarice, who had been watching her silently, raised her hand.
“I know how.”
“…What?”
“How to operate the device.”
“You do?”
“Yes. It’s in Room A, hidden among the dolls.”
“Wait, how do we get back?”
“…It returns on its own after some time.”
Leah nodded at Clarice’s answer and looked at me.
“Let’s go together.”
“…Alright.”
“Wait, I’m coming too.”
With Maria joining us, we headed to Room A and soon found the device Clarice had mentioned. It was a button hidden inside an unusually large doll among the others. The moment we pressed it, a heavy vibration began.
As soon as we felt the vibration, we ran back to the room where Ariel had been. We barely managed to slip inside before the mechanism sealed it again.
“…I almost got crushed to death.”
“Don’t say such horrible things.”
Maria scolded me while catching her breath. She was already winded from that short sprint—her stamina really was poor.
“Hmph.”
Noticing my gaze, Maria turned her head and stared at the door.
“Let’s open it.”
“Yeah.”
When we opened the firmly shut door, a familiar room came into view.
“This is…”
“…Room C.”
“It is.”
What kind of insane layout was this?
“So the moment the device activated, the culprit who was in Room C stabbed Ariel in Room D?”
“It seems plausible.”
It was a simple enough explanation. But there were more than a few strange points. I was about to mention them when the device began moving again.
The tremendous noise made me close my mouth. I waited for the mechanism to finish. Once the vibrations stopped and I opened my mouth to speak again, the door burst open.
What now? I frowned and looked toward the door. Terin and Ophelia entered, their faces deathly pale.
“Ophelia!”
“Terin.”
“Are you okay?”
“…Yeah.”
Ophelia nodded, but her face showed she was anything but okay. She collapsed weakly to the floor.
…
Her eyes, staring blankly at Ariel’s corpse, were filled with emptiness.