I went into the next room to investigate the body there. The head was Enbi's, and the torso looked like Inuzuka's. As expected, the body had been chopped up into 14 smaller pieces, and both arms and legs had been arranged in the order of Enbi, then Inuzuka, then Amino from top to bottom. What's more, the dog tag Enbi had had around his neck had fallen to the side of the body. I picked it up to inspect it. All it had on it was his name, in the Roman alphabet.
Now that I'd looked at two of the mismatched corpses, there was no real need for me to force myself through another disastrous scene to investigate the third. But there was nothing else to do right now but see it for myself. I clung to the wall as I moved to the next room to investigate the third body inside.
The head was Inuzuka's, and the torso was Amino's. Both arms and legs were, from the top down, Inuzuka's, Amino's, and then Enbi's.
I'd succeeded in investigating all three bodies, but other than confirming the dismemberment, I hadn't gleaned any new information. I didn't know how any of them had died. I couldn't perform an autopsy well enough to determine their estimated time of death, either. Though, they didn't look like they had been gushing out blood; the pool of blood mostly seemed to just be soiling the sheets reddish-black, so maybe it safe to consider them as having been cut up after they were already dead. It was probably safe to think of those pruning shears as the thing used to cut them, too. Whether or not that was true, it was clear to see that the cutting had been done on top of the beds. I found several places where the sheets had been damaged as proof.
I returned to the hall to give Kirigiri my report. My role had already switched from being the detective to being the assistant to the armchair detective.
"I've grasped the situation," Kirigiri said calmly. It was more than a little unsettling to see her with this much composure, despite being three years younger than I was. "There's just one more thing I'd like to confirm," she said, making it sound like a demand.
"What is it this time, Little Miss Detective?"
"Press that switch." She turned towards one of the walls. The switch to open the dome was there.
"Oh! That's right! I forgot to check that out!"
The roof. If the person who brought us here was a sixth person yet to be introduced, then after they killed the three detectives, they might have opened the dome and escaped through the roof. And they'd still be there, hiding on the roof even now.
I opened the cabinet on the wall and pushed the switch. With the whirr of a motor, the concave, mirrored roof began to open. All at once, wind and snow blew in. It was even darker than it should be for this time of night, but I could peer through the gap. Once it had opened enough, I took my finger off the button.
"Can you investigate on top of the roof?" Kirigiri asked, shivering as she shook off the snow from her head.
"Mmmm, it's pretty high," I said, crossing my arms.
But maybe I could make it, even if other people couldn't.
I dragged the round table over from the middle of the room and put it up next to the wall. Then, I hopped up on the table, shoes and all, aimed for the opening in the dome—that is, the place where the wall ordinarily met the ceiling—and jumped.
I made it!
It had been close; my fingers were just barely hanging onto the top of the wall. This was the edge along which the dome slid open and closed, to the left and right. I pulled my body up, and somehow managed to crawl up onto it.
"I'm surprised." Kirigiri sounded impressed. "That was an amazingly powerful jump."
"Heheh... These are my prized springing legs. I broke the vertical jump record for high school girls." It was painful, but I finally managed to get myself up onto the roof's open edge. "But unfortunately, my body's pretty weak overall, so I couldn't put these prized legs to work in any sports. If I ever managed to compete with them somehow, then maybe I could have gone to Hope's Peak... Haha, just kidding." I'd chosen the path of the detective. However prized they may be, my legs had basically no impact on my detective skills.
But today, for the first time, they'd come in handy.
I strained my eyes through the snowy darkness to look around the area. But, unfortunately, I couldn't see the culprit. I didn't even see any traces of anyone else crawling up onto the roof this way. I just saw the snow piled up on the roof, making the shape of a white star in the darkness.
I sighed, my breath visible as a white cloud in the dark night, and jumped back down into the room. I hit the button to close the dome.
"I guess there really isn't anyone else here but us," I said, wiping snow off my uniform.
"So it seems," Kirigiri said with a nod. "But what you did still helped, at least in the sense of affirming that there is no one on the roof."
"Yeah, thank God for that," I said sarcastically. "If no one else is around, that makes you more and more suspicious."
"You're still saying that?" Kirigiri asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Hasn't there been enough investigation by now? No one came in or out of the building except us. Three out of the five of us are dead. It was either me or you who killed them."
"No, all you've done is establish the situation. You haven't reasoned enough to take that situation to its logical conclusions yet," Kirigiri said, looking straight up at me. Her face was simultaneously that of an innocent little middle school girl, and that of a detective who never once lost the trail. "Let's sort through everything from the top, piece by piece. If we do that, then I'm sure you'll see who the true culprit is, Onee-sama."
