The Outsider
"Hey, get some sleep. You should be extremely tired."
I was sitting at my usual seat in the cafeteria when Kazuhiro walked in with a paper cup in each of his hand.
Kazuhiro sat right in front of me and looked out the window, which was tinted red with twilight.
"It’s not night yet. Also Keisuke, Shōta and everybody died…"
"That's why we have to live for them."
Kazuhiro encouraged me as I was whining.
"So, while you are still clear-headed, I’m going to ask who do you think did the series of murder?"
Kazuhiro put the paper cup in his left hand on the table close to me and put his mouth on the edge of the other cup.
"Not me, at least."
I put my hand on the paper cup Kazuhiro brought.
"I think so."
"There is too little information."
"That's one of the killer's tricks, isn't it? He is using the excuse of experiment to keep us focused on other things and make it harder to find clues to the culprit."
"If this keeps going…"
"Yes, we will die out."
The paper cup was strained in my hand.
"At least leave us a dying message, that would be better."
"But isn’t the killer clones?"
"What are you talking about? You saw it too, right? The two different ways of killing in the previous experiment. One was certainly done by a clone. But those with numerous scars are clearly the work of an alive human. I can see hatred and resentment of humans. The clones that are emotionless could not conduct such behaviors."
"You are right."
My hand got extra strong and a little of the tea in my cup dripped onto my hand.
"Why do the murderer do this?"
"I have no idea. I'm not a psychiatrist, so I can't read people's emotions, but maybe it's a grudge against our school, or a hatred of all Japanese people. Worst case scenario, it could be loathing towards all mankind."
"A grudge against our school, do you mean something like bullying? If the target was Japanese, it would be about the absurdity of Japanese politics and laws; if the target was all of mankind, it would be…"
"Something like social outsider, right?"
"But, I can't imagine someone like that being at this school."
"They just keep it in their heart and didn’t show on surface."
Kazuhiro answered curtly.
"The culprit is one of us…"
"And if it is one of those who are surviving now, the candidates are less than ten."
"But we don't watch everybody all the time, so the whole sequences could have been done by anybody."
"From now on, should we keep an eye of each other and monitor their actions?"
"No, I think we will be forced to act alone in the next experiment."
"It’s a dead end. I think the key, though, is that only the first and fourth experiments were done via email on a cell phone."
Kazuhiro threw the empty paper cup in his hand into a trash can near the entrance of the cafeteria and returned.
"In other words, only this time, the killer didn't have time to record the tape."
"Or the killer was in a situation where he or she couldn't move around."
I added to Kazuhiro’s opinion.
"But, aside from fourth, didn't the first experiment have as much time as he or she wanted because it was before the whole experiment started?"
"Maybe it was unexpected even for the killer that the first experiment would happen at that time."
I came up with a wild deduction.
"So you're saying that he or she was planning to do it on a different day or at a different time, but somehow it forced him or her to do it during the lunch break today."
"Yeah, That's why the culprit panicked when what he or she wanted happened all of a sudden. Therefore, there was no time to set the tape."
Kazuhiro seemed to be taking my reasoning seriously.
"But if that is the truth, wouldn't the culprit prepare the tape days in advance to be set up at any time?"
"Maybe that wasn’t possible either, for some reason."
The reasoning was too vague to pursue further.
"Anyway, now the possibility of multiple offenses has faded. If there were multiple culprits, they could have made up as much time as they wanted."
"But we cannot deny it completely. The culprit seems to respond to any event in a flexible manner. Maybe they did it on purpose to deceive us."
I drank the rest of my tea and stood up.
"Make sense."
"And the killer probably avoids conspicuous behavior as much as possible, so…"
Kazuhiro read my intentions beautifully.
"Do you mean since everyone's tired and quiet now, is this the time for the culprit to make move?"
I gave Kazuhiro a small nod.
