Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1 Chapter 3 Part2

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Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1
Chapter 3: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 2, part 2
The next day, in cla.s.s, I was busy thinking about the request. Even though finals were coming up soon, almost all of the cla.s.s material just went in one ear and out the other. Even though I was sitting in my desk, lined up next to my cla.s.smates, I felt isolated, as if I alone was in another world entirely.
During my lunch break, I looked up information on the Kiba family in the library. My school's library has a larger collection of older books than any other library in the area. But it didn't seem like I was going to find any crucial information in the short period of time I had for my lunch break. I left for the time being, resolving to come back after school.
I noticed that the view outside the window was darker than usual during my afternoon cla.s.ses. The sky looked like it was going to start snowing any minute. A wintry low-pressure system was hovering over the east, and from the north, a chill of negative 40 degrees was advancing towards us through the upper air. No wonder my lips were chapped. As I applied some lip balm during break, I found myself staring down at the plans for tomorrow written in the letter. Tomorrow was the day.
After school, I finally got the information I was looking for in the library. In a ten-year-old back issue of a monthly astronomical journal, I found the words "Sirius Observatory".
It was an article about visiting private observatories: four pages long, with pictures, and about Sirius Observatory. I made a copy of the article and brought it back to the dorm. I'd managed to get hold of a pretty good bit of data to look over, hadn't I? Maybe it wouldn't have anything to do with the request, but at least I felt like I had enough information to answer questions in the interview without a problem.
That night, I packed up my notes and data, along with a change of clothes and so on just in case, ready for the next day. My mental preparation also seemed perfect. The only thing I was worried about was the poor weather. The forecast said there would be some snowstorms starting tomorrow.
The next day, I skipped school and headed towards Hatesaki Station. By the time I got there, it was already snowing a little. The surrounding area was full of rice paddies that were dried up for the winter, and despite the daylight, the snow made it dim and gloomy, with just the occasional faint light from private residences filtering through.
The time was 2:00 P.M. It was an hour earlier than I was supposed to arrive, but the train only ran there twice an hour, so I played it safe when I left the dorms, and wound up arriving extra early. Only two people got off the train with me at this unmanned station.
I went to wait in the waiting room. There were only two benches lined up in the small room, with a cylindrical stove burning between them. I parked myself in front of the stove immediately, warming my cold hands.
Then, the two men who got off at the station with me earlier came inside. They both sat wordlessly on the benches, each checking their watches before looking around themselves. At this dead-end station, with no signs of life, seemingly at the very edge of the world, three whole people sitting around and killing time was clearly an unusual situation.
"Um..." I was the first to speak. To be honest, I was afraid. Right then, I was nothing more than a high school girl surrounded by two unfamiliar men in unfamiliar territory. "Are either of you Yoshizono Ooe-san?"
Both of the men reacted to my timid question at the same time, exchanging glances as if fumbling for an answer, before looking back at me.
"Hmm, so, you're a detective too, miss?" The first man to speak had hair neatly parted at a precise 7:3 ratio. He was wearing a suit and a long coat, along with a tightly fastened glossy necktie. He was the very picture of a capable salaryman, without any trace of individual personality in his appearance. If we had been in the business district, he probably would have melted into the background instantly. He was just that mundane to look at. "I may not look it, but I'm a detective, too." He pointed at himself with his thumb. "You probably are too, huh?" he asked the man sitting across from him.
That man was wearing sungla.s.ses. Behind the dim grey lenses, I could just barely see which direction he was looking. He had short hair and a strong frame. He wore a black tank top underneath a trench coat, with a dog tag hanging around his neck. Somehow, he gave off the impression that he wasn't your average Joe. The man in the sungla.s.ses nodded, remaining silent.
"Three detectives... and still no representative," the man in the suit said theatrically, crossing his arms.
"Wh-What do you mean?" My voice shook out of nervousness and fear. "I wasn't the only one contacted for the request?"
"So it seems," the man in the suit said, a bold smile appearing on his face. "There's still time until the appointment. Who knows how many more people will show up?"
I see... If I thought about it, of course I probably hadn't been the only detective called out. And that letter with the written request could have been sent to anybody, as long as they just changed the name on it. If the person making the request was trying to test their detectives, the most efficient way to do that would be to invite multiple people to come interview.
The two men started killing time in their own ways. The man in the suit was listening to his headphones as he flipped through a book on English conversation. Exactly how your average salaryman would try to kill time. On the other hand, the man in the sungla.s.ses was playing with a foreign coin in his fingers. Occasionally he scared me by apparently remembering something and letting out a huff of laughter.
Unable to stand the atmosphere, I left the waiting room and went to wait on the bench outside. My breath was a white haze in the cold air. It looked like it was gradually snowing harder. The snow started piling up on my hair and shoulders and culottes, so that if I didn't brush it off every so often, I was in real danger of becoming a snowman.
About half an hour later, a train pulled up to the platform.
One middle-aged man was the only person who got off the train and pa.s.sed through the ticket check. He was red-faced and a little chubby, with a shabby coat and unkempt hair. Basically, he didn't look like he was going to be the mysterious representative.
He went into the waiting room, of course. Through the gla.s.s door, I could see the three of them talking. But finally, the middle-aged man came out by himself, walking over towards me.
"Hmmm, a high school girl detective?" he said, grinning. "Don't think a girl should be squandering the best years of her life working a thankless job like that, though."
He sat down next to me, bringing the smell of alcohol along with him. Is he drunk in the middle of the day? No way, right? I immediately shifted on the bench to put s.p.a.ce between us.
"Don't act so dubious."
"Um... Are you a detective, too?"
"What the h.e.l.l else did you think I was?" he asked, spreading out both of his arms. I couldn't speak for anyone else, but to me, he just looked like a drunk old man. "Well, guess there's some use in being suspicious. Everyone's got that youthful vitality inside. But how good of a detective are you really gonna be if your powers of observation fall short?"
"Powers of... observation?"
"Lemme demonstrate." He looked me up and down, gaze licking over my body. "Last year, for Christmas, you went to sit through ma.s.s all by yourself, didn't you? But you got sick of those boring hymns, so halfway through, you skipped out, bought a whole bunch of cakes, went back to your dorm room, and tried a little bit of each of them. It was a lonely Christmas from start to finish."
"H-How did you know that?!" I unthinkingly slipped into an offended tone of voice. But shockingly, most of what he said was right on the nose. The only part he got wrong was that I didn't have much money at the time, so instead of buying lots of different cakes, I only had one chocolate cake. "Were you watching me from somewhere?!"
"No, no, no, these are my powers of observation," he said, looking very pleased with himself. "First of all, looking at your uniform, I can tell you're a student of that famous missionary school. It's not too unreasonable to think Christmas ma.s.s would be an event hosted by the school. But I hear school rules have gotten lax over the years, so it's probably not mandatory, just an optional event, right?"
"How did you know I went by myself?"
"Those shorts you're wearing are pretty unique, huh? You're probably wearing them for your detective work. Not to mention it's a weekday, but here you are prioritizing a request over going to school. If you're that gung-ho about your detective work, you probably don't have many friends to play around with during the rest of your time. And forget about having a boyfriend. On a special day like Christmas in particular, most everyone's gonna be with the people they're closest to. You're not the kind of person who has any relationships that deep."
—Mind your own business.
He was right, though.
"Hymns are just no fun as a general rule. I thought maybe you wouldn't be able to put up with them. You got the h.e.l.l outta there halfway through so you could go buy some cake. I know you like sweets, since you've got some candy and chocolate peeking out of your backpack there."
He pointed to my back. Surprised, I pulled my backpack off to check, and saw that the zipper wasn't closed all the way, and the sweets I brought were in fact peeking out. I hid them quickly, suddenly self-conscious.
"It's obvious you live in the dorm. If you lived at home, your mother wouldn't let you out of the house with that wrinkled collar and frayed hem."
The more he pointed things out, the more self-conscious I became, and the more uncanny it felt. If he could see right through all of my actions just from these tiny details, it felt like I couldn't hide anything from him.
—Is this what it means to be a detective?
It was our first meeting and I was already overwhelmed by the ability of this person in the same business as me. I felt like, as a detective, I wasn't even a match for a drunk old man like this.
"You have a little more respect for me now, don'tcha?" He took a small bottle of whiskey out of his coat pocket, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap. "While I'm at it, aren't you cold waiting out here? How about I accompany you back inside?"
"Uh... I'm fine. I'll stay out here." I turned him down firmly.
He looked like he was about to accidentally spit out the whiskey he just took a sip of. "Ohhh... I see. Well, true, it's almost time, so it should be fine waiting out here. I'm heading in. I'm gettin' up there in age..." The middle-aged man staggered back into the waiting room, rolling his heavy-looking carry-on bag...
At last, it was almost 3 o'clock, when we were supposed to meet.
I saw a white minivan heading our way, driving up between the rice paddies. It was approaching quickly, cutting up the grey, snowy landscape. It stopped in front of the station, and out of the driver's seat came a man in a dark blue suit. He noticed me immediately, and headed my way. "Would you happen to be waiting for Ooe-sama?" he asked.
"Yes; and you are...?"
"I am with a taxi company. Ooe-sama has requested that I bring all of you to a certain location."
So we still don't get to meet the representative? I started to get a little worried about where this was going. The weather kept getting worse, and everyone else I was traveling with was an older man...
"Please, do get in the car."
I got in the minivan like the driver told me to. I got in the very back, and put my backpack on the seat next to me so no one else would sit there. The men in the station's waiting room noticed the van too, and started to come out and file in. The man in the suit got in first, and then the man in the sungla.s.ses. The drunk old man got in last. He didn't seem to care where he sat, and sat right behind the driver's seat, sitting his carry-on bag on the seat next to him.
The driver returned and got back behind the wheel. "My apologies, but please wait for a moment before we depart. It isn't too cold inside the car, is it? Would you like something hot to drink?" He started distributing cans of coffee that he'd been carrying in his arms. I was chilled down to my bones, so I took a can gratefully, holding it in my hands.
"What do you mean, 'please wait for a moment'?" asked the man in the suit. "Let's hurry up and get going."
"It is not yet 3 o'clock."
"There's no one else at the station."
"There's a train arriving at 2:58," muttered the man in the sungla.s.ses.
"Who else is gonna show up? If they are coming, they're late."
"Now, now, don't be so impatient. You want some of this?" The drunk old man held out a bottle.
"I don't drink." The man in the suit brushed off the bottle, opened the can of coffee, and started to drink that instead. Then he took a cigarette out of his breast pocket and started to light it up.
"My apologies, but smoking is not permitted inside the car," said the driver.
"Say what?" The man in the suit raised his voice in irritation, reluctantly putting away the cigarette. I just observed the adults fussing from the back of the car, drinking my coffee and warming myself up.
Right about then, a train pulled up to the platform. But here from outside the building, I couldn't see anyone getting off of it. The little two-car train was almost entirely blocked from view by the building. But I saw it again before long, pulling away and heading off into the snow.
Did anyone actually get off?
Just as it was turning 3 o'clock, I saw a girl at the ticket barrier. She was small and frail.
—Who is she?
She looked transparent to me. Maybe because her cold, pale skin looked like it was blending into the snowy landscape. A ghost...? No, that would be ridiculous. Her evenly cut bangs fluttered in front of her eyes in the wind. That faint swaying was undeniable proof that she actually existed there in the physical world. Maybe it was appropriate for someone like her to be standing in a corner of this lifeless, dreary world, but as far as a detective appearing before us went, she looked completely out of place.
She saw the van and, cautious of the snow beneath her feet, ran up to it with a soft crunch crunch, holding her black bag in both hands...
Is she the fifth detective? Do you expect me to believe that? After all, the clothes she was wearing—a frilly blouse and black blazer—those were none other than the uniform of the junior high section of my school. The color of the ribbon on her chest showed that she was a first-year in middle school.
She stood to the side of the van, making herself taller to peer inside. It didn't seem like she could see us very well from out there.
The driver stepped out of the van. "Would you happen to be waiting for Ooe-sama?" he asked, and she bobbed her head in a nod. "Please come in. We have been awaiting your arrival."
At his invitation, she stepped into the van. She didn't look particularly surprised to see that several people were already inside. Actually, it was the other men who were left speechless by the appearance of such a young detective. I picked up my backpack, opening up a seat for her. She wordlessly sat down, placing her bag on her lap and holding it there with her arms.
"Now then, it is time for us to depart." The driver started the engine. The van, with five detectives inside, finally started up a road it would not come back down.
Stay tuned for the next update next Sunday (PST)!