“It would be best to move to a different location to analyze the exam paper properly,” Hayes said.
“If we stay here and Professor Tophus happens to return, things will get complicated.”
“If he takes the papers back, it’s all over,” Lure muttered with a troubled expression. “Do you know a good place?”
“Let’s head to my detective agency. It’s nearby.”
The two of them carefully tucked the exam papers into the envelope and moved to the Heis Detective Agency.
It was a tidy office—not particularly spacious, but equipped with everything one might need.
“So… you really are a detective?” Lure asked, looking around the office with newfound realization.
“What did you think I was until now?”
“When I first met you, I thought you were either a complete novice or a con artist.” Lure laughed awkwardly.
‘But he wasn’t like that at all.’
Now that the initial shock had worn off, Lure realized just how incredible this detective actually was.
“…When we first met, you said you knew who the culprit was the moment you heard about the exam theft. You weren’t bluffing, were you? Did you really know it was me the second you saw me?”
“Well, something like that.”
“How on earth did you do it?”
“Hmm…” Hayes scratched his cheek, looking a bit put on the spot. “Let’s just call it my secret method.”
The vague answer could have seemed suspicious, but to Lure, who had already witnessed the man’s skills firsthand, even that felt extraordinary. Furthermore, this detective’s brilliant deductions didn’t stop there.
“Even when you heard my testimony, you realized it was the truth instantly.”
“Well…”
That was truly amazing. As the person involved, Lure had been frustrated to death, but he could also understand why Ursula and his friends hadn’t believed him. Objectively speaking, anyone who believed his testimony would have seemed crazy.
If a student was the culprit, it was a simple story. Who would believe that the professor who wrote the exam had stolen his own questions? Yet this detective—and only this detective—had seen through to the truth of that absurd story.
Hayes muttered sheepishly, “I had no choice but to believe you. I saw the shadow moving.”
‘What does that mean? Is that some kind of metaphor for intuition? Or is it the secret to how he found out the professor was the culprit?’
Lure couldn’t understand it at all, which only made Hayes seem more impressive. He felt like he could really trust this detective’s abilities.
“Are you really going to help me solve this case?”
“Of course. I gave you my word.”
“Then… I’d like to officially commission you, Mr. Hayes.” Lure bowed his head politely. He was desperate. “Please, help me prove my innocence and keep me from being expelled!”
Hayes gave a wide grin. “It looks like I have a second client. The Heis Detective Agency has a 100% success rate so far. I’ll do my best to ensure that record stays unbroken. Leave it to me, Lure.”
“Thank you! As for the fee… I’ll pay it even if I have to take out a loan!”
Hayes waved him off. “Don’t worry about that. This is just an extension of the case I’m already working on anyway. I’ll collect the full fee from the original client.”
He meant he was going to squeeze every cent out of Professor Tophus one way or another. To Lure, Hayes now looked like the physical manifestation of the ideal detective descended from the heavens.
“Please, just call me Lure from now on! My dream is to become a detective who realizes social justice, and you are the senior who most closely represents that goal for me!”
Hayes didn’t refuse. “Alright. Lure, let’s work together and solve this case.”
The two of them joined forces and began a full-scale investigation of the exam papers. However, despite their enthusiasm, results didn’t come easily.
“It just looks like a normal exam paper,” Lure said, falling into deep thought as he flipped the pages back and forth.
As a top student, he did his best to solve the problems, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
“The questions feel a bit easy, but… it’s a well-constructed exam based on what the professor taught us.”
In fact, the quality was better than the usual classes. Professor Tophus’s explanations were often a mess and hard to follow, but the structure of the exam questions was remarkably clean.
‘The man has no talent for speaking, but he certainly has a way with writing.’
“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the questions themselves. Then again, if there were, the other professors would have noticed a long time ago.”
“Hmm. Let me check it once as well.”
Since there was only one copy of the exam, they couldn’t look at it simultaneously. Lure handed the paper to Hayes, his eyes shining with expectation.
‘If it’s Mr. Hayes, he’ll definitely find something!’
At this point, Lure trusted Hayes’s abilities completely. However, contrary to Lure’s expectations, Hayes’s face turned pale as he received the paper.
“…Criminology?”
“Did I not mention it? That octopus-head’s subject is criminology. I heard his family has been a long line of prestigious psychiatrists or something.”
Lure dismissed it lightly, but the exam paper was filled with technical psychological terms. Hayes had always been far removed from academic studies and had never even had an interest in psychology. To him, every academic term on the paper looked like an alien language.
‘Black is the text, and white is the paper.’
In that black-and-white world, spots of red occasionally caught his eye. Those were the correct answers Lure had marked while solving the problems earlier. Only those circled numbers were barely readable to him.
‘Let’s see… Answer one is three. Answer two is five. Answer three is one.’
He was in a situation where he couldn’t understand the questions but could read the answers. In a way, this situation aligned with the nature of Hayes’s ability. In circumstances like this, Hayes always found the path to the correct answer.
“Wait a second, Lure. Doesn’t this look a bit strange?”
“Huh? What is?”
“Here, the answers are repeating.”
It wasn’t something visible to someone actually solving the problems. The same answer didn’t appear consecutively, and all the numbers were distributed fairly evenly. However, if one stepped back and looked only at the answer numbers…
“The answers for questions one through five are 3, 5, 1, 2, and 4. Then, from questions six through ten, the answers are also 3, 5, 1, 2, and 4. It’s the same for eleven through fifteen, and sixteen through twenty.”
“My god! You’re right! The same sequence of numbers is repeating!”
The two of them brightened up at finding a clue, but that was as far as it went. They couldn’t figure out what the numbers meant.
“Could it be latitude and longitude?”
“No. A five-digit number is too ambiguous for that.”
“Maybe it points to somewhere inside the school?”
“Third floor, Room 512… Locker number four?”
“There’s no way any building has a Room 512 on the third floor.”
“Ah, I know! Platform Three and One-Fifth at Crossburn Station!”
“What even is that?”
They agonized over it for nearly an hour, but no plausible answer emerged. What kind of information could they possibly derive from just five digits?
“We need an additional clue…”
Lure picked up the exam paper again. After staring at it for a long time, he found a new lead.
“…! Mr. Hayes! Here! Look at the decorations on this exam paper!”
“Decorations?”
Hayes couldn’t immediately understand what Lure was talking about. Decorations on a formal, stiff exam paper?
“Here! These divider lines on the paper!”
Lure pointed to the very beginning of the exam, where the detailed instructions were written.
· · · – – – · · · · · · – – – · · · · · · – – – · · ·
[Subject] Principles of Forensics [Professor] Tophus
[Department] Criminal Investigation [Student ID / Name] ( ) / ( )
“If you look closely, dots and lines are mixed together! There’s no mistake! This is Morse code!”
“……!”
Hayes knew very little about Morse code, but there was one thing he could definitely read.
Three short, three long, and three short again.
S.O.S.
“Someone… used the exam paper to send a distress signal.”
Hayes’s expression hardened. This was no longer just a matter of exam theft or expulsion. Perhaps a much more serious incident was hidden behind this.
“We have to solve this case quickly,” Lure said, his face just as serious as Hayes’s.
Lure had already deduced many things in that short span of time. “Someone hid a secret code in the exam paper behind Professor Tophus’s back, and that code was a distress signal. But Professor Tophus found out. That’s why he conspired to rewrite the exam! I got my hands on the paper last night, so the professor must have realized the situation by last night at the latest. Right now, the person who sent that signal might be suffering something terrible at his hands!”
Lure hurriedly shoved the paper into Hayes’s arms.
“There must be more detailed information hidden in this paper. The meaning of the numbers, or other signals! We have to find out quickly and save them!”
“I know that, but…!”
Hayes’s eyes wavered with panic. Lure was overestimating him, but Hayes knew his own reality perfectly well. He wasn’t a proper detective; he was someone pretending to be one using a single ability.
The ability to identify a culprit.
It was certainly a cheat-like skill, but it was also his only skill.
‘I’ve already used up my tricks by figuring out Tophus is the culprit!’
Deciphering a code on an exam paper within a time limit was not his area of expertise. He might be able to figure it out eventually if he spent a long time on it, but from this point on, time was of the essence.
‘Someone else would be much faster at decoding this than me.’
Someone more specialized in this kind of deduction. Yes. For instance, a real detective, or someone like Lure…
“The students of the Criminal Investigation Department.”
“Pardon?”
“Lure. You said the level of the students in the public university’s Criminal Investigation Department is the best, right?”
“Well, of course. Our school is the only public university in the Imperial Capital. It’s a department full of fanatics who would stake their lives on an investigation!”
At that moment, a brilliant idea flashed through Hayes’s mind.
“Tell me, Lure. What do you think is the best way to interfere with a culprit?”
Fiddling with the exam paper, Hayes gave a smirk.
“Don’t you think the best way is to recreate the exact situation the culprit wants to avoid most?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“It means… I’m going to make sure the exam proceeds as scheduled.”
Lure’s face was filled with question marks at the incomprehensible statement. However, it was time for Lure to realize the true nature of the detective before him.
Hayes.
His talent wasn’t deduction; it was his overwhelming ability to take action. He was a detective who would use any means necessary to achieve his goal.
“Get ready, Lure! We’re going to go ambush Professor Tophus right now!”
“Whaaaat?!!!”
Lure’s eyes widened so much they looked ready to pop out.
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