I didn’t see anything besides the books. There weren’t any cardboard boxes or anything. Maybe they’d gotten rid of everything.
So the only thing left to check was the desk. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I started by trying to open the top of its three drawers— and it suddenly stuck.
The top drawer was locked. I looked closely and saw that there were marks that seemed to have been made with metal along the surface, as if someone had tried to force it open.
“A key...” I gulped.
I put my hand to my chest and took a deep breath.
Calm down.
“This is definitely... worth trying, yeah.”
I took a glance at Sarai, who was still waiting outside the room...
...and took the gold tooth key out of my pocket.
That’s right. This is what I’d been looking for. How many locks had I tried since that day? And none of them had fit. But, I’d realized...
The answer was inside Dr. Hashigami’s house. In other words, right here.
It was worth coming here after all! Now I could prove my innocence! With a mixture of joy and nervousness, I stuck the gold tooth key into the lock.
I turned it slowly—
“Huh...?”
And it didn’t move at all.
Of course. I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the sizes of the key and the keyhole didn’t match at all. The key was way too small.
“I guess it was too much to hope for...”
I had gotten my hopes up, which only made it worse. I felt like slamming my forehead into the desk.
“They say truth’s stranger than fiction, but that’s not true. Miracles don’t just happen in the real world.”
But still, this drawer was locked. That was a fact.
There must be a clue inside. It was my only hope at this point.
So I couldn’t give up.
Once, a long time ago, I’d hidden the ero-doujin I’d bought at Tora no Ara from my mom behind a drawer. By now I was more careful, and carefully switched them between multiple hiding spots. But because of that, I knew a lot about drawers.
I decided to ignore the locked top drawer, and see what was in the two below it. Both of them were empty.
I took the second and third drawers out of the desk. This made it easier to get at the top one. If I was lucky, I might be able to reach around and grab whatever was in there.
I stuck my head into the empty spot below the drawers and looked up.
“W-What the heck?”
The bottom of the the first drawer had been destroyed. There was nothing but empty space there.
Someone had tried the same approach, then destroyed the bottom of the drawer and taken whatever was in there.
Whatever the killer had been after must have been in here.
Evidently whoever had ransacked this room had been a lot more careful than I thought.
“I was too late...”
There was nothing left here now.
I sighed.
I was just an amateur. Just a high school student. Just a NEET god. There was no way I could find a clue like a detective in a mystery novel.
After this room had been ransacked, Sarai’s family and the police would’ve searched it thoroughly. So of course, in a sense this was to be expected.
So why’d I get my hopes up? It was useless. No matter what I did, I wasn’t going to find anything. The killer’s group wasn’t stupid enough to leave behind any evidence that someone like me could find, and the cops weren’t idiots.
In the face of this obvious and inevitable result, I just felt exhausted.
I didn’t want to move. So much had happened today that I was tired.
I couldn’t take any more. I should just go home and hide in my room. And then I could just wait for them to find the real killer. I could just wait and live in fear of the cops coming to visit. I could skip school. I wouldn’t be able to graduate, but that didn’t matter.
I gave up and just lay down on the floor right there.
“It doesn’t matter.... None of this matters...”
I almost cried when the thought came to me. I tried to wipe away the tears and calm myself down.
I found myself looking up at the ceiling. There were lots of little, tiny holes.
It was the kind of stuff you saw in the music room at school. I think it was for soundproofing. Or were they tiny holes to let air pass? I couldn’t remember seeing them in a house before.
But the holes in a music room ceiling were placed at regular intervals. The ones here were different. Several of them were filled with putty or something. It looked really bad, like something a child had done as a prank.
“To keep the rain from leaking in...? Nah, no way.”
Did they hire a contractor to do this? Like maybe he was supposed to fill all the holes, but stopped halfway through for some reason?
“That ceiling’s weird.”
I started to count the holes. There was a character in JoJo who would calm himself by counting prime numbers. Maybe I could calm myself down that way.
But I quickly started to feel a little sick. My vision was starting to dim.
The dots on the ceiling were lined up in rows, but several of them were filled.
I squinted and saw what looked like a face... maybe.
Didn’t I used to play this game all the time as a kid?
I focused on three random holes and stared at them intently. That was enough. They instantly resolved themselves into the parts of a face — two eyes and a mouth.
“Right, right. This is the so-called simulacra effect. I know.”
Sarai had given a lecture on it before at Kirikiri Basara.
What a stupid-looking face.
“Hey there, ceiling-chan.” I said, jokingly. “Did you see what they took from this room? If you did, can you tell me?’
“The answer’s--BZZZTT--right in front of you! --ZZZzZZ--How come you can’t see it? Are you stupid?”
“Uwah!” I leaped up onto my feet.
I was hearing a voice. That was impossible...
“A-A talking ceiling?!”
And it was a girl’s voice, too! I was the only one in this room. Unless Sarai was outside with a voice changer, there was no reason I should be hearing a girl’s voice.
“Ceilings don’t talk. --ZZZzZZTT--You idiot.”
“...”
Wait a second. Wait just a second.
This slightly muffled, bratty voice...
“Zonko?! You scared me. I’m hearing a lot of static for some reason.” I opened the case to the Skysensor. The power was off. “But why did you decide to start talking now?”
“I don’t--ZZZzzz--have time to talk about it.”
“Huh? Not again.”
“The old ghost--zzzzz--lady is--Zzzz--gonna come to this room soon.”
“Ghost?” When she said that, I felt a cold shiver run down my back.
That thing I’d seen downstairs that looked like an old woman in a white kimono. Was that really...?
“Well--ZZZZ--I’m joking about her being--zz--a ghost.”
“You’re joking?”
Huh? What? What’s going on?
It felt like the static was getting worse.
“That old lady is--zzzZZZ--that four-eyes’s--zzz--mom.”
His mom was an old lady?
“What are you talking about?”
“All the stress must’ve aged her that badly. BZzzz--but that’s a sign of how scared--zzz--she is of other people. She might think--ZZzzz--that you’re a thug--zzz--who’s come to raid this room.”
“I got permission from Sarai—”
“There’s no time to explain that--zzzzZZZZZzz--listen carefully. You can pretend to be a detective, but in that world--zzzz--in the real world--zzz--you won’t find anything.”
“W-What are you trying to say? Do you know what it is I’m looking for?”
No. That wasn’t it.
“You know what was hidden in this room, don�
�t you?!” “You’re already a part of this--zzzzzzBZZZzz--you can’t help it.”
“Just explain things. This isn’t a movie or a TV show, so instead of giving me hints, give me the answer!”
“I just told you. The answer is--zzzZZ--that ceiling--zzzzzZZZZ--that you’re staring at.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything!”
All those holes on the ceiling—
Irregular dots—
A soundproofed ceiling for a music room—
A failed attempt at fixing rain leaks—
A kid’s prank, filling them with putty—
Putty?
Suddenly I found myself looking at the lonely pen holder on the desk. I’d been ignoring it until a moment ago, but for some reason I was noticing it now. It was filled with red and black pencils — and a tube of putty.
“Is this ceiling...”
It wasn’t a half-assed repair job? In other words, the professor himself, not a contractor, had done this.
Which meant that the holes were filled deliberately!
“Zonko! Some of the holes are filled up! Do you mean this is a message the professor left?”
“You’re actually smart--zzzzzBBBZZzzzz--for once today. It’s--zzzzzz--code.”
“Code? CODE again? You mean these rows of dots?”
“Figure out the rest for yoursel--zzzBZZZZ--don’t poya-poya--zzzzz--the old woman--ghost is--BZzzzBZzzz--”
“Hey, wait!”
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzz-” The voice disappeared, leaving only static.
“Zonko!”
What the hell was going on here? She just showed up, talked for a while, gave me a bunch of orders, and then disappeared without answering any of my questions! The room fell silent again.
I listened for a while, but I didn’t hear Zonko.
I looked back up at the ceiling.
There was no way I could solve this.
“I’m not even a detective.” What had the professor meant when he’d left CODE as a dying message?
What kind of elaborate message did he need to hide with those letters...?
“Hmm?”
In other words, “CODE” meant...
Something encrypted to dots...
“Are these letters?”
“--zzzz--Not--zzz--bad!”
“Wait, you’re still here?!”
site 43: MMG
“For us, the spirit world has long left the realm of fantasy.” Takasu’s dramatic voice drew the gazes of the seated men. “There is no difference, strictly speaking, between the spirit world and our own real world. This was proven by Nikola Tesla a century ago.”
Takasu paused for a moment and squinted into the darkness at the back of the room.
“...Our leader has told us that in this world, we exist alongside the will of the dead. We use the common phrase ‘spirit world,’ but it does not refer to another world. It’s the same as this world, and it always has been. In terms of quantum mechanics, the spirit world and the real world ‘overlap,’ the one difference being that that in one, time does not flow.”
That difference had been their biggest barrier.
“Go to the spirit world and you’ll find yourself trapped in a ‘Prison of Time.’ Solving that problem has been our last and greatest task.”
At the end of their research, Takasu and the others had reached the “prison of time.” In that prison, real time expanded, and escape was presently impossible.
“If it weren’t for that prison, we would’ve chosen death a long time ago,” Hatoyama said bitterly.
Takasu nodded. “But at last, we have a hint to help us solve the problem.”
Takasu displayed digitized text on his tablet. It was an unpublished paper they’d recovered just a few days ago from Isayuki Hashigami’s study, entitled “Time and the Spiritualizing World.”
Finding this was what had made possible Takasu’s decision to abandon the entire first generation.
“Both myself and the RIKEN team read the report, and it was very interesting. If this were to be made public, it would overturn everything humanity thought it knew. Of course, it doesn’t contain all the answers, but if we use this to reorient our research team’s priorities, we may be able to synchronize time between the spirit world and the real one. And what that makes possible, is—” Takasu spoke once again in a dramatic voice as he looked around at the seated men.
“The acquisition of the spirit world.”
site 44: Shun Moritsuka
“A molar, a doujin manga, a fortune-teller, and black magic, huh... Kichijoji’s turning into a fantasy world that would surprise even Conan these days.”
I’d been following Yuta Gamon for about fifteen minutes.
He was wearing a yellow and grey duffel coat that made him easy to spot, and he’d been glancing left and right the entire time he walked. Even if he was scared, he was still moving fast. He’d hurried all the way here.
But it didn’t seem like he’d noticed me.
“Well, even with these fantasy mysteries going around, my first card I should draw for this stage... is Kirikiri Basara.”
Yuta Gamon went into Kichijoji Park.
It was an unobtrusive park in the middle of a residential area. It barely got any visitors to begin with. Only the locals knew there was a park there at all.
But today, there was someone waiting for him.
A young girl with big boobs. She was... cute, but looked stupid. Maybe there weren’t any girls in the real world who had that combination of brains and voluptuousness Fujiko had.
Once he met up with the girl, they left the park and started walking to Kichijoji Theater.
There were love hotels down there...
“...But I guess he wouldn’t be up for that right now, huh?”
Sleeping with a girl was probably the last thing on the mind of the person I was tailing.
He was a suspect in Isayuki Hashigami’s murder, after all. He was probably terrified that the police might come knocking on his door at any minute.
And in fact, I was sure of it.
If I took his fingerprints and compared them with the ones that were left all over Dr. Hashigami’s seminar room, they’d match.
If that happened, the cops would arrest him, and announce his capture at a press conference.
And then the case would, at least on the surface, be closed.
On the surface.
“It would be easy to arrest him, but... I want an opponent I can chase constantly, one where an invisible bond of trust develops even though we’re detective and thief, you know?”
If nothing else, the boy I was chasing wasn’t the sort. He wasn’t the type I wanted to chase.
“I’d run after him, waving a pair of handcuffs and screaming, ‘Stop!’ and he’d say, ‘No way!’ That’s the kind of guy I’m looking for.”
Well, even if I wasn’t going to find anybody like that, tailing someone was still fun.
The two people I was following went inside a shady-looking café on the second floor of a multi-use building.
I could see the name of the café at the bottom of the stairs.
Café☆Blue Moon.
Seemed it sold alcohol at night.
“Hmm... That’s a pretty grown-up date for a modern, teenage couple. I thought kids with no money and lots of time either went to McDonalds, or played with their phones like idiots in freezing cold at Inokashira Park.”
Or maybe... there was some reason they had to come here?
“No way. Hahaha.”
I decided to go in, too.
It didn’t look like a place that would get a lot of customers, so there was a chance I’d run into my target.
But if that happened, I’d figure something out.
Just as I put my foot on the stairs, my phone rang. I wasn’t sure if that was good timing or bad.
“Yes. This is Agent Moritsuka.”
“Why aren’t you following the 256 incident?” the person on the phone asked.
“That’s a stupid question. Do you want me to dance with the ghost of Nikola Tesla? Either way, the ‘list’ will connect to the 256.”
“So you’re telling me the key is Isayuki Hashigami, after all?”
“It’s the only way to catch the ghost by the tail. There’s a meaning to the number 256. And Isayuki Hashigami knew what that meaning was,” I said as I walked up the stairs to Blue Moon.
site 45: Yuta Gamon
“Oh, you’re finally here... hmm?” I looked towards the entrance of the room expecting to see Sarai, but instead I saw a small, middle school boy that I’d never seen before.
He was wearing a trench coat, but it was clearly much too big for him. It looked a lot like cosplay.
Wait, was it cosplay? It didn’t seem right to stare, but I couldn’t help myself.
Was he really in middle school? He looked shorter than me, but his face didn’t look as young as I’d expected.
Maybe... maybe the police had chosen a detective who didn’t look like a professional and sent him after me? There was still no sign that the police were going to visit me over Dr. Hashigami’s murder, but every day I imagined them getting closer and closer.
Thanks to the 256 incident, there had been cops everywhere in Kichijoji over the last few days, and I passed by them quite a bit. Honestly, it was bad for my heart.
“Sarai-kyun’s late, huh?” Ryotasu stifled a yawn, completely oblivious to my troubles.
Last night, I’d visited Sarai’s house and found out that there were letters hidden on the ceiling of his study. It seemed to me like the professor’s word, “CODE,” was referring to those encrypted letters. Although honestly, it had been mostly Zonko who’d told me that. But I had no idea how to actually turn the dots into letters. After I told Sarai, he’d contacted me this morning and told me he’d solved the “CODE” riddle. It had been less than a day.
He had personality issues, but he was a genius. No, maybe his personality was weird because he was a genius. He was smarter in person than he was online.
So we’d promised to meet at Blue Moon, but he’d said some crap about coming after work.
This was so important, and there was so little time. Why did he care so much about his damn job? Was this his way of being a dick to me? Whose board did he think he was commenting on all the time?
Occultic;Nine Volume 2 Page 12