Sacrifice Without Fear
When I arrived at the cafeteria, there was already someone else before me.
"Oh, it’s you Shūhei. What’s up?"
Yūsuke Shimazu, who is on the same baseball team as Shōta.
"Hey, don’t stop your hand. Now, every second counts."
The team’s manager and Shimazu’s girlfriend, Miyuki Izumi.
"But, we’ve mostly looked for every place at here."
Haruhiko Kunohe is another baseball player who is known for a great pitcher.
I was delighted to see them.
"You guys are alive."
"Huh? Of course. I won't be beaten by pseudo-myself."
"But most of the other baseball players were…"
Haruhiko continued weakly.
"You don’t have to say until the end. I’ll help you."
I stepped into the cafeteria.
"We don’t need your help. There's not much to hide here. Three of us is enough."
Yusuke's words convinced me.
"Okay. Then take care, everyone."
Next I headed for the First Science Lab, where we had temporarily hidden in the earlier experiment.
"Okay. Because it is a head, it would be really scary if it is in something like this."
I slowly opened the shelf under the nearby sink.
"But who is the culprit, anyway? This school has relatively strict security, so I don't think it's possible for a stranger to come in from the outside and hide somewhere. When it comes to places to hide, I think it would have to be places where there are no surveillance cameras, so the culprit should be someone with familiarity with the structure of the school. Above all, the only people who could have known that only a Twelfth graders and Seventh graders were in school today were school officials, students and their parents."
I started muttering to myself to distract fear.
"First, let’s check the alibi I hear often on TV."
I opened each shelf and drawer in turn and rummaged through them. The purpose is to find a guard’s head and at the same time find a weapon for self-defense.
"So, if I remember correctly, when the tape recorder was broadcasted at the start of the first experiment, all of us in the school had no alibi. If it is only the recording, we could have done it yesterday or the day before yesterday. In terms of spreading that killer gas, anyone can do it from air vent or ventilation window somewhere. The weird frequency to our brains too, if you put a machine or something in front of the microphone in the broadcast room, anyone could play it with a remote control at anytime with his or her own will."
I suddenly looked up at the ventilation fan near the ceiling of the science lab.
"However, about the first status report. That can't be done with tape, so the most suspicious people were the middle school students on the second floor. That being said, most of the high school students were in the cafeteria at that time, so it would be hard for one of us to get to the broadcast room without being spotted by the middle school students. But not all high school students weren't at cafeteria, and if it was the killer, he could have manipulated the clones in various ways to secure the area near the stairs, and he could have made it to the broadcast room without difficulty."
Without noticing it, I had left the First Science Lab and came to a neighboring, eighth-grade classroom.
"But the killer must be incredibly prepared and smart."
"We were in the broadcast room when the second experiment was told, which means the killer knew the results before then. Oh, wait a minute. But the killer only mentioned whether the experiment was successful or not. He can do that kind of thing anyway he likes. It can even be done the day before. No, no. That cannot be possible. Since the culprit reported the number of deaths too. So the killer must have arrived just before we came to the broadcast room, set the tape, and left while we were rummaging around inside the hidden room. We were all focused on the hidden door in the back at the time, so it's not surprising that we missed the culprit in our blind spot. Or perhaps…"
Suddenly, Risa's words came to my mind.
"Suspicion… do ourselves have to doubt each other? If so, it's not impossible to slip out and set the tape while five of us are distracted by the hidden room. But all six of us went to the broadcast room together that time, so we'll never know the results of the experiment."
Next I opened the door to the staff room. There was a teacher inside.
"Mr. Nabeshima."
The teacher turned around and took up a battle stance the moment his name was mentioned.
"Oh, it’s you Tsuchiwura. You scared me."
He was my homeroom and math teacher last year. Of course, I need to have my suspicions about him too, but there is too little information to do valid deduction.
"I’ll help you."
I opened a drawer in a nearby teacher's desk. Inside, what appeared to be a student's test was neatly filed, but I was not inclined to do cheating at this moment.
"Me, Risa and Keisuke were in the schoolyard together when the violator was reported earlier. In contrast, Kazuhiro and Minami were running all over the schoolyard. Of course it should be possible enough for the everyone else, especially the ones who were acting alone. Minami has been with me and Risa until then, so she couldn't have enough time to record and set the tape in such a short… wait a minute. No, as I recall, the violator’s report was given through an email. It would have been possible to secretly send emails to everyone even Minami, but also Risa and Keisuke who were with me at that time."
Mr. Nabeshima did not listen to my monologue, but was simply looking for a storage space where the guard's head could be hidden.
"But then it came over the loudspeaker that the second experiment was over. That is difficult for Minami, who was only away for a short time. Conversely, Keisuke had been on his own up to that point. If he set a timer, he can broadcast it without being there. Kazuhiro is alone throughout that experiment. He can do whatever he wants. Even hiding the head of the guard…"
Kazuhiro's face suddenly appeared in my mind.
"No, no, no, it's not like we know the culprit is one of our group. And we were all together during the status report of the second experiment. And if the perpetuator is such a smart criminal, he must have thought of many ways to avoid suspicion. It is that Kazuhiro. He will not do anything to make himself look suspicious."
I scratched my hair since I couldn't get my reasoning straight in my head.
"Why am I thinking that there is a culprit among us? How could we have known how many survivors there were in each experiment? Damn, I don’t know. Why did the perpetrator use email to report the violator? And also when the killing gas was released and when the content of the third experiment is told earlier, it was an email. What is the meaning of this? Or perhaps he couldn’t broadcast. is it because he didn’t have time to record?"
"Excuse me, Mr. Nabeshima. I will go."
I left the staff room with a slightly angry tone.
