‘Oh, seriously. What is this!!!’
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A night where even the moonlight was dim.
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Lourre let out a silent scream.
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‘Is this really right?’
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She was currently in the victim’s room, having sneaked in. She was dressed like a thief, carrying all sorts of miscellaneous forgery tools.
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They say all detectives are eccentrics, but Teacher Hays seemed to have a much, much stronger streak of it. It was maddening enough that he suggested manipulating evidence, but to think he would even entrust it to her!
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‘He says he doesn’t know how to use a quill, who even says that!’
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However, after seeing the ink burst out and soak Teacher Hays’s hand the moment he gripped the quill, she had nothing more to say.
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Adjusting the pressure of a quill was quite a delicate task, so it was impossible to teach someone in a short amount of time. If Lourre hadn’t learned it before, she wouldn’t have been able to do it either.
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So, she had no choice but to handle this forgery work herself, but still…!
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‘It’s too scary…!’
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To be alone in a room where someone died, and at a dawn hour similar to when the victim passed away!
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What if a vengeful spirit was lingering in this room?!
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‘No. Let’s stay calm, Lourre. It’s not like I can turn back now.’
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After calming her heart with deep breaths, Lourre slowly reached out toward the dying message.
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‘…At least it’s a relief it was left at the scene.’
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They said it was for the purpose of preserving the scene, but if that were truly the case, the police should have been guarding the evidence from inside the dormitory building, not outside.
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“Heh, hehehe. You’ve made a foolish choice. You stupid police. I bet you never imagined a detective and his assistant would pull something like this?”
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Laughing wickedly made her feel a bit more stable.
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‘Right. I’m not a detective’s assistant right now. I’m a very, very bad person! Who am I? The perfect phantom thief who outsmarts the police! A genius of evidence manipulation! A professional at bad deeds!’
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Repeating the self-hypnosis seemed to give her a little courage.
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“Now then. Shall we…!”
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Lourre shone the lantern on the notebook and examined the dying message.
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‘I just need to fix this letter a little. It’s a very simple task.’
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Lourre steadied her breathing and traced the letters with her fingers. It was to visualize in her head how she should alter them.
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‘…I think it’ll be too obvious if I just change it.’
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Wouldn’t it be more natural to erase the letter a little first and then continue writing?
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‘Or I could completely erase this ‘O’, write the O as if the culprit wrote it, then erase that again and write ‘O’ like it was originally…, ugh, it’s too complicated!’
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Unfortunately for Lourre, self-hypnosis could create confidence she didn’t have, but it couldn’t create forgery experience she lacked.
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For Lourre, who had never forged a single report card in her life, forging the culprit’s handwriting was an excessively difficult task.
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‘What should I do….’
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Lourre agonized for a long time, fiddling with the letters.
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Then, when she suddenly pulled her hand away.
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“Hwah?!”
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The letters were smearing.
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“N-No way! Why are they erased when I haven’t even tried to erase them yet!”
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She lifted her hand.
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The ink was all over her fingerprints.
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‘I must have fiddled with the letters too much! You idiot!’
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Lourre wiped her hand vigorously on her skirt. Only now did she feel the cold sweat that had drenched her hands. Since she had been fiddling with the letters with such hands, it was only natural for the ink to smudge!
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Panic set in at the thought that she had pointlessly ruined the entire plan with her own mistake. To make matters worse, the bad news didn’t end there.
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“!@#@%$#”
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A voice was heard from the floor below.
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It was definitely the voice of the detective. The detective, who she thought had left, had returned to the scene.
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‘He sounds angry…!’
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It seemed the detective was having an argument with Teacher Hays.
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‘He’s definitely angry because the Teacher blocked his path!’
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According to the plan, the Teacher should be standing at the bottom of the stairs, keeping watch to ensure no one entered.
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It was only natural. If this scene were discovered, both the Teacher and she would be headed straight to a jail cell!
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‘W-What should I do? I have to clear the scene first!’
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Lourre moved in a frantic panic. However, even if she could figure out how to clear everything else, there was nothing she could do about the smudged dying message.
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Just as Lourre was falling into a total panic.
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“!@#$$%-.”
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The noisy voice of the detective suddenly cut off-.
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Thump-!
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A tremendous sound echoed.
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Tap, tap. Tap, tap.
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Soon, the sound of someone coming up the stairs while leaning on a cane was heard.
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“What should we do, Lourre?”
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From outside the door, a bewildered voice spoke.
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“I accidentally knocked the detective unconscious.”
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How do you do something like that by accident?
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Lourre wanted to cry.
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***
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“Just what on earth happened!”
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When Lourre shouted, Hays scratched his head.
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“No, I guess a detective’s intuition really is a thing. It’s surprising even to me. I don’t know why he was so stubborn about insisting on checking upstairs.”
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Lourre was speechless.
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‘He said he was certain who the culprit was through a detective’s intuition!’
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“Anyway, since the detective was acting like that, I didn’t have much choice. I had to knock him out.”
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“…Isn’t it all over now that you’ve beaten up a detective?”
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“No, no. It’s fine because he won’t know I’m the one who knocked him out. I smacked him with my cane and knocked him out before he could even process it.”
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“Is that even possible?!”
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“I did it because it is. Anyway, once the detective wakes up, let’s just insist that it looked like he fell. There are no other witnesses, so if you and I both insist, we’ll manage somehow.”
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Lourre let out a long sigh.
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“I’m sorry, but we’re doomed anyway. The letters are all smudged.”
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“What? The letters are smudged?”
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Lourre flinched when she saw Teacher Hays’s face turn completely pale.
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“I-It’s really not my fault! I hadn’t even applied the alcohol yet, but just because I touched them a bit with my hand, the letters all smeared—.”
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Lourre was startled. The Teacher had suddenly snatched her hand.
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“Hwah! T-Teacher! What are you doing all of a sudden!”
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“…It’s true. There’s a stain.”
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“T-That’s what I said! So what?!”
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“It’s impossible. How can dried oil-based ink come off on your hand?”
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…Huh? Now that she thought about it, he was right.
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‘Thinking about it, since it’s a dying message written with a quill…, it should be oil-based ink?’
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That’s why she had even separately packed a handkerchief soaked in alcohol, thinking it wouldn’t be easily erased.
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‘But, is that important?’
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“Maybe the victim used the wrong ink. Couldn’t that happen?”
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“No, when I checked earlier, it was definitely-.”
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Hays stopped mid-sentence, ran into the victim’s room, and examined the quill.
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“T-Teacher?”
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He didn’t even answer, focusing intensely on his examination for a long while. Soon, he nodded his head.
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“As expected, what’s used here is oil-based ink. I’m certain.”
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“How on earth do you know that?”
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“I checked all the gifts earlier. Especially this quill that the victim used until the very end; I checked every single minor characteristic.”
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He showed her the ink stains on the tip of the feather and the dark marks on the nib.
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“What’s on here is oil-based ink. I checked earlier.”
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The ink on the quill the victim held in his final moment was undoubtedly oil-based.
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However, the dying message was written in water-soluble ink.
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“Just…, how did this happen?”
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Lourre couldn’t understand.
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“It’s obvious. The dying message was manipulated.”
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“That might be true, but…, then why bother using a different pen and different ink? It would be more rational to use the quill that was at the scene to manipulate it.”
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“They couldn’t have. According to the detective, the victim was holding the quill in his hand until the very end. At the time the body was discovered, the quill wouldn’t even come out of his hand due to rigor mortis—.”
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Suddenly, Hays’s eyes widened.
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“I’ve got it.”
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“Yes?”
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“I see! Why the culprit created a fake dying message!”
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Hays had been puzzled before.
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Why was a dying message left at the scene?
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Whether the dying message was real or fake, wouldn’t it have been better for the culprit if there were no dying message at all?
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Now he seemed to know the reason.
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“The culprit didn’t leave a dying message because they wanted to, but because they had to. When the culprit entered the victim’s room, rigor mortis had already set in! That’s why the quill wouldn’t come out of the victim’s hand!”
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“…!!”
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Hays’s eyes sparkled with conviction.
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“The victim died while writing something, and the traces of that were obvious. The culprit could remove the real dying message, but they couldn’t possibly pull the pen from the corpse’s hand. That’s why.”
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Hays, the detective, declared.
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“That’s why the culprit had no choice but to leave a fake dying message with a different pen. To hide the existence of the real dying message!”
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The real dying message was elsewhere.
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In that case, what needed to be done was clear.
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“We have to find the real one.”
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“But Teacher. If what you’re saying is true, then the culprit is Mr. Edward, the first person to witness the scene.”
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“It’s not just my claim; it’s actually the case.”
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“Yes, yes. Anyway, if that’s the case, wouldn’t the culprit have had plenty of opportunities to dispose of the real dying message? He could have just thrown it in the toilet in this room and flushed it away.”
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“No. It couldn’t have been that easy.”
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I asserted, pointing around the victim’s desk.
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“Look here. See how there are several notebooks of the same size plugged in here?”
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On the victim’s bookshelf, several mass-produced notebooks that appeared to be distributed by the school were lined up.
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The notebook containing the forged dying message was also the same kind of item as those notebooks.
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“And?”
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“Other than these notebooks, there’s no paper suitable for writing visible in the victim’s room at all.”
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Therefore, there was a high probability that the real dying message was also written in one of these notebooks.
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“Would you like to check if any of the remaining notebooks have torn pages?”
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Lourre scanned the notebooks and answered.
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“Um, I don’t think there are any.”
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“Right. There are no damaged notebooks.”
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Therefore.
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“The culprit took the notebook itself that contained the victim’s dying message.”
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“If that’s the case, it definitely would have been impossible to flush it down the toilet.”
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“Right. Rather, hiding it in his coat and bringing it out would be…”
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At that moment, a memory flashed by like lightning.
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“That notebook!”
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“Pardon?”
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“The notebook the culprit was supposed to borrow from the victim! Lourre, was that notebook plugged in here?”
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My heart was so hurried I couldn’t even wait. I hurriedly rummaged through the notebooks. Notebooks filled to the brim with neat handwriting. Every notebook had the date written at the top without fail….
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“As expected, the lecture notes for that day are missing!”
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Yes. Thinking about it, it was only natural.
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The victim had been asked by the culprit that evening to lend him the next day’s notes. Naturally, he would have been organizing his notes that evening, and while doing so, he was murdered.
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Therefore, the dying message should have been written in those lecture notes.
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The culprit entered the scene the next morning and naturally took the notebook. The notebook with the dying message, the very notebook the victim said he would ‘lend’ to him!
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“This way, it wouldn’t have mattered if the culprit walked out with the notebook in plain sight. There are plenty of excuses.”
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It was easy to imagine what the culprit would say if questioned about this.
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‘I realized Allen was dead only after I had already taken the notebook I was supposed to borrow. In the confusion, I must have just walked out with the notebook.’
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If asked about the whereabouts of the notebook?
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‘Oh, well. I was so out of my mind that I don’t remember at all.’
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He would probably make a show of crying while saying that.
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‘Surely he didn’t plan all this and ask the victim to lend him the notebook the day before?’
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I wondered how he could have known the victim would leave a dying message, but just thinking about the possibility gave me chills.
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“T-Then the culprit took the most important piece of evidence to his own room! By now, he might have disposed of that notebook without a trace!”
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“…No. He probably couldn’t have.”
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It was close to being half-wishful thinking, but there was a basis for it.
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“The police probably arrived almost immediately after the culprit recovered the notebook. Since the culprit was the first witness, he would have been interrogated right away, and even after that, he stayed in this dormitory the whole time.”
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A dormitory room was not a place where privacy was guaranteed. The proctor had the keys to the rooms, and it wasn’t that difficult for others to come in and out.
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Even I had gone around searching the rooms of all sorts of students under the guise of investigating the mystery gifts with the detective’s tacit approval.
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In such an environment, secretly disposing of a notebook would have been very difficult.
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Unless the police had focused on the missing notebook from the start, which they hadn’t, I didn’t think he would have gone through the trouble of trying to destroy it.
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‘Rather…, he would have hidden it. In a place that wouldn’t catch the eyes of the police.’
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And then he would have planned to get rid of it gradually after the police left and the commotion died down.
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“Lourre! let’s go back to that culprit’s room!”
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“Yes!”
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We returned to the culprit’s room once more.
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Earlier was to create a forged dying message, but this time it was to find the real dying message.
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“This time, it’s finally a task worthy of a detective’s assistant, not a phantom thief!”
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Lourre rolled up her sleeves and stepped forward to find the dying message. She looked ready to search everything from the bed mattress to the cracks in the floor, but the victim’s lecture notes were discovered with anticlimactic speed.
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“It’s here. The victim’s notebook!”
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We finally found the real dying message.