Kirigiri Novel Book 1

Chapter 6: Duel Noir 3

I could understand what was happening before my very eyes, but I needed plenty of time to process it.

The man crawling across the floor was the Enbi I'd met? I knew the real Enbi had been killed and dismembered, but the man there before me was the spitting image of him.

"What does this mean?"

"It's exactly as it appears, Onee-sama. This man is the true culprit," said Kirigiri, lighter at the ready.

The man crawling across the floor had a small knife in his right hand. But it would probably be pretty difficult for him to wield it as a weapon, when he was missing both his legs.

"When did you first realize?" asked the man, raising his head to face Kirigiri.

"That your legs were prosthetic?" Kirigiri asked in return, tilting her head. "I first noticed when you stepped out of the van. But it took quite a while before I realized that information was connected to the case."

"Your legs were... prosthetic?" I timidly asked the man on the floor. He nodded. Now that I thought about it, Enbi had definitely been dragging his legs along. I had just assumed that that was due to an old injury.

"I took the legs off and hid them in the telescope in that room over there. I'd appreciate it if you brought those over here, but... that's probably a no-go." He smiled wryly.

"Who exactly... are you?"

"Tadashi Asakura, the unluckiest underdog in the world."

I'd never heard that name before. But he looked like Shiita Enbi. He wasn't wearing his sunglasses, but it was undoubtedly the same face.

"Um... Did you kill those three people, Asakura-san?"

"I did. But... I screwed the whole thing up." There was a refreshing smile on Asakura's face. Maybe everyone has an expression like that when they finally give up on everything. "The story's like the girl told it. I called myself Yoshizono Ooe and sent a job offer to five detectives. That was both to draw you out and to camouflage the written challenge that was also sent out. Incidentally, I sent a letter out to the real Shiita Enbi, too. I just put a meeting time that was a little earlier in his letter."

"You called Enbi out first, killed him, and then dismembered him?" I asked.

"That's right. I hid Enbi's body in the telescopes and in the chair. Well, I was constantly aware of the possibility that I could be found out at any time, so I took as many precautions as I could to avoid that. For example, when I was investigating the rooms with Inuzuka, I tried my best not to let him touch the telescopes. It was because I was there with all of you, as Enbi, that I could manage some deflection away from the corpse. I thought it was a pretty good trick."

True—none of us had realized that there was someone else besides the five of us in the building, dead man or no.

"Aah... So, my new life and 120 million yen vanished overnight?" Asakura said, as if calling out to the heavens.

—What is he talking about?

"I never thought I'd be shown up by a brand new middle school detective. I tried to pick a completely useless detective to play the culprit... Who would have thought that she would expose the real truth?"

Kyouko Kirigiri—she really did expose everything.

"When exactly did you realize that you were sitting right on top of the culprit's hiding spot?" I asked.

"I'd considered it as one of the options from the beginning."

"From the beginning?" Asakura was the one most surprised by that. "I didn't move even a millimeter from where I was, and I even regulated my breathing so it shouldn't have been overheard."