The Confession
My lips formed the name, and the room fell into instant silence.
But that quiet shattered in the blink of an eye.
“...What?”
“Aina!”
“What are you saying...!”
“How can you talk to someone who just lost her friend like that?!”
Voices of confusion rained down, but the dorm supervisor only nodded.
And so Ophelia took the defendant’s seat while I sat at the prosecutor’s table.
I looked at Ophelia. She stared back at me with eyes full of despair.
In that moment, gazing at her face, I spoke.
“Ophelia.”
“...”
Was that an act? Or was it genuine?
The grief of a woman forced to kill her own childhood friend with her own hands, or simply a mask she wore?
I was truly curious, but I kept that question locked behind my lips.
I could feel the girls watching me. Some were outright glaring.
I let out a small sigh and continued.
“First of all. Ophelia claimed she and Ariel were separated, but... in my opinion, the time they spent apart was only at the very beginning.”
“...”
Ophelia remained silent, showing no intention of answering.
I didn’t look at her. Instead, I turned toward the other girls.
“It’s true that the weapon was taken from Room B. But as you saw from its size, it wasn’t something you could hide from a companion while retrieving it.”
“Hmm. That’s true.”
This was one of the holes I had identified.
Even if it was called a dagger, it was far too large to slip into a uniform pocket.
That meant it had to be carried openly or hidden under a skirt, but with a companion present, discovery would have been inevitable.
Therefore, Ophelia must have joined up with Ariel after securing the weapon from Room B.
“Next... they would have gone around checking the rooms.”
And here was the second flaw. If this murder had been premeditated, this point was even more critical.
“If the two hadn’t been together from the start, this murder would have been impossible.”
“Why?”
Leah’s puzzled expression prompted a quiet reply from me.
“How would you know exactly when the mechanism would activate if you were separated?”
“...Ah!”
“This is why all the stories we’ve heard so far haven’t lined up perfectly.”
There were only two possible scenarios for this perfect locked-room murder.
First. The killer had been lucky enough to be in Room D when the mechanism activated.
But that made no sense. The perpetrator had been calculating enough to retrieve a weapon from Room B that was difficult to conceal in the first place.
Would someone that meticulous really rely solely on luck to create a locked-room murder? It didn’t add up.
Second. What I had already suggested—staying with Ariel the entire time.
If you remained close to your target, opportunities would naturally arise. Especially since the killer knew there was a button in Room A.
The loud noise that had rung out last night was proof of that.
The girls would investigate and eventually press the button in Room A. All the killer had to do was murder Ariel then and there.
Even in this scenario, however, there was still a flaw.
“What if the button was pressed before securing the weapon?”
“That’s why the button was hidden in advance. Terin.”
“Huh?”
“Remember when we first went up to the third floor? Ophelia came out of Room A, didn’t she?”
“...Oh, yeah. Now that you mention it. She looked really rushed, so I didn’t try to talk to her.”
“It wasn’t so much that she looked rushed... it was closer to panic at seeing us.”
It must have been the shock of being caught in the act of hiding the button.
After concealing it, Ophelia had just agreed with Ariel to check Room C together when the mechanism activated.
I wasn’t sure why they chose Room C. Since they had left before us, they should have been checking a different room.
I decided to set that aside for now.
“With the dagger she had prepared, Ophelia stabbed Ariel in the heart.”
“...”
“After stabbing the heart, she tried to strike from behind as much as possible to minimize bleeding. Still, some blood was bound to splatter onto her clothes, so she moved to Room D.”
She had probably figured out the building’s layout yesterday while pressing the button in Room A.
“It would have been problematic to be found with Ariel’s corpse once the mechanism reset.”
“That makes sense...”
“After killing Ariel, she kept watch from Room D, then went down to the second floor. She returned straight to her room and changed her clothes.”
It probably hadn’t taken her very long. Although she was a noble, she came from a fallen house, so she would have been capable of dressing herself without help.
“Then she returned to the third floor and headed for Room D first, since it reeked of blood and she wanted to be the one to discover it... but by then Terin had already gone inside.”
“...”
“The one piece of luck for Ophelia was that she had sprayed on a strong perfume.”
“I can still smell it even now...”
“Still feeling uneasy, Ophelia went to Room E. Since it faced Room D directly, it was a good spot to keep an eye on Terin.”
After confirming that Terin had left Room D, she went to Room C before entering any other room and ‘discovered’ Ariel’s body.
“...That’s how it happened.”
“...Hmm.”
Leah stared at me in silence. The logic was airtight; the other girls seemed to have nothing left to say.
I glanced toward Ophelia. At some point her expression had changed, and she was now gazing at me intently.
It was completely different from her usual demeanor. Or perhaps I had never truly known her usual self to begin with.
“...Ophelia. Say something, at least.”
At Terin’s urging, Ophelia quietly opened her mouth.
“You got quite a lot right.”
“...What?”
She was admitting it this easily? As I stared at her in a daze, Ophelia gave a faint smile.
“It’s fascinating. There are definitely parts you could poke holes in if I wanted to argue.”
“...That’s true.”
The reasoning I had laid out was closer to forcing the pieces together after already deciding Ophelia was the culprit.
Most of the circumstances fit, but there were still points open to rebuttal.
There were even parts I myself couldn’t explain.
I had expected a long, drawn-out debate, but...
“Why? Are you surprised I admitted it so cleanly?”
“...Yes.”
“Is it really true? Ophelia, did you kill Ariel?”
Terin stared at her with hollow eyes. Ophelia smiled brightly and answered.
“Yes. I killed her.”
The first meeting between Ophelia Dervon and Ariel Haden was closer to a cursed encounter.
The Haden family, who had used financial power to crush the Dervon viscountcy.
They were a wealthy merchant house, but they lacked any ‘title.’
So they targeted a minor, insignificant viscount family in the countryside, using every kind of fraud and scheme to bring the house to ruin.
That insignificant viscount family’s name was Dervon.
The viscountcy had a single daughter. From a young age, she was known for her exceptional talent and beauty.
The head of the Haden family used the debt documents in his possession to bring Ophelia into his household.
His intention was to marry her to his eldest son, Colin Haden.
Cast out like a piece of merchandise sold by her own family, Ophelia began receiving an education in the Haden household.
In the Dervon family, poverty had meant she had never received any proper schooling.
Splendid clothes, jewels, refined yet luxurious meals. And quality education.
Having received all of these, Ophelia grew more beautiful and noble with each passing day.
Unlike the vulgar merchant family, she had been born with innate dignity, making her an object of envy.
So much so that a girl named Ariel Haden came to admire her.
Once again, the first meeting between Ariel and Ophelia had been ill-fated.
Yet because they were the same age and shared similar interests, they quickly grew close. Before long, Ophelia had grown accustomed to life in the Haden household.
Had she never learned the truth, she would have regarded the Hadens as her benefactors and followed them for the rest of her life.
But no truth remains hidden forever. One day, while playing hide-and-seek with Ariel, Ophelia discovered a confidential document.
It contained all sorts of information. The nobles’ scandals. Debts. And a single plan.
Upon reading that plan, Ophelia could only feel horror.
That very day, Ophelia ran away from the Haden family mansion.
What she hadn’t expected was that Ariel would follow her, and that there were people waiting to target them both.
“Ariel and I couldn’t help but be shocked when we saw the third floor of this mansion.”
“...Why?”
“It was far too similar to the mansion where the experiments had taken place.”
Her smile slowly deepened as she spoke.
“Children died, one per day. Those whose magic power was drained became magic stones.”
“But there were also some strange children. Their magic power remained intact, yet something inside them had been hollowed out.”
“The head researcher called it ‘soul extraction.’ The souls needed to rule this mansion. That was what soul extraction meant.”
...This didn’t make sense. As far as I knew, the Rose Pavilion had been built more than a hundred years ago.
Yet the Ophelia standing before me was a girl who had not even reached nineteen.
“Was it really this mansion?”
When I asked, Ophelia shook her head firmly.
“No. The third floor of this mansion is nothing but a crude, inferior imitation of the research facility from back then.”
“Hmm.”
“But this mansion seemed closer to the ideal paradise the head researcher had dreamed of.”
She had sensed it instinctively. A faint madness flickered in Ophelia’s eyes as she said this.
“Ahahaha—! Those foolish researchers. They used human souls as materials and eventually went mad. In the end, even the head researcher was killed! They killed him!”
Most likely, Ophelia and Ariel had escaped once the researchers began dying off, just as the journal had recorded.
The head researcher had claimed he had released them, but by that point he had probably already lost his mind.
“Anyway, after escaping, Ariel and I enrolled at Veritas Academy.”
“You skipped the most important part.”
“Ah, you mean why I killed Ariel? That’s what matters, right?”
Ophelia looked at me. Both her eyes and her lips carried a smile.
A smile that was utterly out of place in the current situation.