Chapter 114
Since both of their attitudes seemed very firm—they'd rather leave one person behind to keep him company than let Usuha Izuki go with them—Usuha Izuki pondered for two seconds and compromised.
"Then I'll stay."
Matsuda Jinpei and Hagiwara Kenji both breathed huge sighs of relief, then hurried toward the changing room.
While putting on yukatas in the changing room, Hagiwara Kenji was still a bit conflicted: "Is this really okay? Little Shinryu is also a police officer. This kind of blatant discrimination..."
Matsuda Jinpei was speechless: "I think he doesn't actually care about this, otherwise he wouldn't have had no reaction until he saw us two leaving and only then stood up—what would bringing him accomplish? Make it convenient for him to continue saying weird things?"
Hagiwara Kenji: "......"
"Besides, you're going to Criminal Investigation Division One too, right? Do you plan to rely on others to solve cases? If you can't see anything, it's not too late to call Samukawa over." Matsuda Jinpei said deliberately.
Men couldn't resist such challenges. Hagiwara Kenji's expression became serious and determined: "Let's go, but hopefully nothing happened."
After all, there were quite a few reasons for girls to scream—like seeing cockroaches or mice...
Unfortunately, as soon as they came out and heard the shouting from inside the changing room, they knew the situation was definitely troublesome.
"What? Can't come?!"
The girl calling police inside shouted loudly: "Why?! Heavy snow? What about heavy snow?! Someone died here! Aren't you police?!"
Just then, the proprietress and a girl hurried over. Reaching the entrance and finding Matsuda Jinpei and Hagiwara Kenji had also come out looking puzzled, they bowed to explain.
"Sorry, something seems to have happened here. If it's disturbing the guests..."
"Someone died inside!" The girl beside her urgently interrupted. "Quickly! You go in and look!"
This girl was obviously also a guest who had specifically gone to fetch the proprietress. Her yukata obi was tied messily, and from her expression, she seemed to be trying hard to control herself to remain polite and not directly drag the proprietress into the changing room.
The person inside seemed unable to wait and came out herself, her yukata also worn disheveled: "Reiko! I called the police! But the police said they can't come!"
The proprietress immediately bowed apologetically: "Very sorry, there was an avalanche an hour ago. The police station is at the foot of the mountain. It's too dangerous at night—they might have to wait until daylight to come."
The girl called Reiko became anxious: "What use is just apologizing? What do we do now?!"
Hagiwara Kenji raised his hand: "Excuse me, we're actually both police officers... Would it be convenient to let us take a look?"
"............"
The atmosphere suddenly went quiet.
"Are... are you really police officers?" The girl who had called police seemed a bit hesitant. "Such a coincidence?"
Matsuda Jinpei scratched his hair and sighed: "My police ID is in our room. Should I go get it now?"
"No need, officers. Please handle this situation."
The proprietress said decisively.
Since someone was already dead, the bath certainly couldn't be used anymore. If the case could be solved quickly, the impact could be minimized.
Best would be concluding it was accidental sudden death—that was common when bathing in hot springs... That would have even less impact on business.
Hagiwara Kenji and Matsuda Jinpei passed through the women's changing room into the courtyard's women's bath.
A corpse floated in the hot spring pool, black long hair drifting like water weeds.
Winter skies darkened early. Street lamps were already on at this time, the dim yellow light barely illuminating the pool, the scene inexplicably gaining several degrees of horror.
Matsuda Jinpei went to examine the body while Hagiwara Kenji questioned the two discoverers about the situation.
"Mina said she wanted to soak first while there were fewer people, so she came here early." Reiko explained. "Yukiko and I were in charge of organizing luggage. We came over after finishing... When we entered, Mina's posture looked strange. When Yukiko called her, we discovered she was already dead..."
So the scene had already been disturbed, but they couldn't be blamed for that.
"Then the scream we heard..."
"That was me." Yukiko, who had called police, said. "I didn't expect to touch a corpse, so I was startled."
"Sorry, could you tell us what position she was in when you found her?"
After roughly collecting information, Hagiwara Kenji noticed Reiko looked somewhat uncomfortable and said: "I've asked about everything here. You can go back and rest first. If there's anything we want to know, we'll ask you later."
Reiko nodded repeatedly. The girl who had called police earlier seemed a bit hesitant but was still dragged away by Reiko.
"Why are you still staying there? Don't you feel uncomfortable being in the same room as a corpse?" Reiko quietly complained.
"I just think... even though she was like that before, she's dead now after all..."
The two conversed in a somewhat depressed atmosphere as they left the changing room. Turning a corner, they nearly bumped into someone.
That person had just come from the adjacent men's bath. Though the skin they accidentally touched was warm, somehow he seemed to carry a chill around him, making them instinctively shiver.
Due to the height difference, from their angle looking up, light shone down from above. Bangs cast shadows that obscured his features, leaving only a pair of dark, crimson eyes coldly looking down at them.
"...S-sorry... sorry..." Reiko tremblingly apologized. "I... I wasn't watching where I was going..."
The other party's gaze without warmth swept over both of them. Reiko inexplicably felt like she'd been seen through in an instant.
That person asked: "Very happy?"
"...Eh?"
"Nothing."
After saying this, he bypassed them and left nonchalantly.
Reiko was dumbfounded, standing there for quite a while before snapping back to reality and belatedly realizing a problem.
That person's yukata wasn't work clothes but what guests wore, and his temperament didn't seem like... In other words, this person had been soaking next door the whole time and only just came out.
...They had made such a commotion just now—screaming, calling police, frantically explaining to those two police officers who happened to be vacationing—she didn't believe the adjacent men's bath couldn't hear anything. Yet he could still leisurely soak until now?!
Someone had died?!!
Reiko didn't understand. Reiko was greatly shocked, especially by that sentence she hadn't understood...
"Hey, Yukiko, what did he just say?" Reiko asked fearfully and confusedly. "I think I heard something about being happy... Did I mishear?"
She was too scared at the time and didn't hear clearly... She must have misheard, right? With someone dead, how could anyone say something about being happy... Or was he telling them not to be sad and to cheer up? No, that tone didn't sound like such friendly comfort at all. She felt it was somewhat mocking...
Yukiko's complexion wasn't good either. She was shaken by Reiko before coming to her senses, saying vaguely: "I don't know. I didn't hear clearly either. Was he saying he felt happy?"
"What a strange person." Reiko said fearfully. "Let's hurry back to our room. I'm scared. Once the avalanche area is cleared tomorrow, let's leave immediately!"
The person these two girls bumped into was naturally Usuha Izuki in disguise.
Hagiwara Kenji and Matsuda Jinpei had said to let Usuha Izuki continue soaking, but that was just a polite way of telling him not to follow for now. Normal people would lose all interest in continuing after hearing someone had died.
But Usuha Izuki wasn't normal. Since the inlet water was clean and it was a separate pool that hadn't contained the corpse, he continued soaking in the hot spring for a while longer. Hearing the chatter next door, he calculated the timing to change his yukata.
Sure enough, just as he calculated, he encountered those two girls right upon leaving, without needing to create the opportunity.
With one glance, the series of skills he'd exchanged for Samukawa Shinryu like [Micro-expressions] and [Cold Reading] instantly provided him with a pile of information.
[I knew the killer was one of them.] Usuha Izuki complained to the system in his mind. [I'm familiar with this routine—when a group comes out to play and someone dies, the killer is definitely among the acquaintances.]
The system asked: [Why not consider accidental death?]
[Maybe in my original world, but the probability is small in this world.] Usuha Izuki chuckled twice. [Especially with Matsuda and Kenji here... You forgot about these two's accident-prone constitutions? Still in school and they've encountered so many cases! Even if it were an accident, it couldn't be this plain—at minimum it would be a truck driver causing a near-accident due to fatigue.]
System: [...You really see through this world's rules.]
[Thanks for the compliment.] Usuha Izuki pondered. [But though I know that guy is the killer, I haven't figured out the specific situation... Let me ask.]
He called Hagiwara Kenji but found the line busy.
So he had to call Matsuda Jinpei instead. Matsuda Jinpei answered immediately and very intelligently realized that if he was calling him, he must have tried calling Hagiwara Kenji first without getting through. So he directly explained: "Hagi is asking a forensic friend about some things. We're not professional enough after all."
Talking to smart people was efficient. Usuha Izuki asked: "How's the situation?"
"Should be drowning death. Found traces of slight struggle." Matsuda Jinpei said. "Because of the hot spring bathing, time of death is hard to determine, and many traces were washed away by water... Specifics probably have to wait for tomorrow's coroner to take a look. Conditions are really limited now."
"Then I'll provide a clue that's not really a clue." Usuha Izuki said. "This probably wasn't an accident. One of those two girls is the killer."
"...Evidence?"
"Intuition."
"............"
Matsuda Jinpei was silent for a moment, his tone becoming serious: "...I understand. I'll relay this to Hagi. Do you want to come to the scene?"
"No, I'll follow those two a bit." Usuha Izuki said leisurely. "Maybe there'll be unexpected discoveries. By the way, I want to ask—did just the three of them come together? Are there any other acquaintances of theirs here?"
"How did you know? There's also the dead person's boyfriend who works here—he's the one who served us dinner."
"...I knew it."
"What?"
"Nothing. Hanging up."
Leaving behind a confused Matsuda Jinpei who even contributed a few suspicion values, Usuha Izuki sighed to the system: [I thought two suspects was too few. Sure enough, it's the classic three-choose-one in the end...]
—The situation was roughly clear. How should he handle this next?