Chapter 26: A Necessary Reason
In the oppressive, storm-tossed darkness of the villa, after what felt like an eternity, the white-hot inferno of Yomikawa’s rage finally began to recede, leaving behind a strange, hollow calm.
“Heh… hehehe…”
She hung her head, a soft, humorless sound, half-laugh, half-sigh, escaping her lips. So, this is it. This is what it feels like to be consumed by anger, to be humiliated to the point of losing all reason.
In the short, chaotic half-hour since she had jolted awake, it felt as if she had lived an entire, exhausting second life, one governed by alien, unwelcome emotions.
In her former existence, she had found it almost impossible to truly comprehend people who lost control of their faculties. It was a purely abstract concept, a clinical observation of flawed human behavior.
“The sheer, brute force of emotion… it’s truly… formidable. It is a verifiable fact that under the influence of extreme emotional distress, an individual can commit acts that are utterly incomprehensible to a rational mind. But then, when the emotional tide recedes, everything simply… returns to normal. As if it never happened at all.”
“Viewed through this new, experiential lens, the recent behavior of the others becomes… transparent. Junko-san, her judgment clouded by a juvenile infatuation with ĹŚgami YĹŤsuke, was naturally oblivious to the feelings of those around her. It was a predictable cognitive blind spot.”
“And those girls at school, the jealous ones… while I still cannot grasp the precise texture of their envy, I imagine it must share a certain… kinship… with this humiliating rage I have just experienced. Their petty, backbiting whispers are, therefore, an entirely predictable response.”
“Then there are the creatures like Ishikawa, beasts governed by pure, undisguised desire. I understand the physiological drivers of such urges. If the psychological component is equally intense, then it stands to reason they would be incapable of masking their intentions. Such individuals, however, are… dangerous variables. They seem perpetually on the verge of losing control. An assault, or some other act of impulsive violence, would not be an unexpected outcome from such a specimen.”
“From this tactical perspective, inhabiting a female form presents a significant number of… complications. One must now factor in such primitive threats. As a male, these concerns were… largely irrelevant.”
As she methodically dissected the motivations and emotional states of others, Yomikawa felt the last vestiges of her own emotional storm dissipate, her mind returning to its preferred state of cool, rational analysis.
Outside, the storm still raged, the wind howling its mournful dirge.
“In any case,” she reasoned, a fragile sense of control returning, “this humiliating anger, this corrosive self-doubt… they are merely the byproducts of a first encounter. I am new to these sensations. Like a newborn infant, I am still in the process of adapting. This… disorientation… is to be expected.”
“Now. Back to the more pressing matter of the suspect.” A cold resolve settled over her. “Regardless of any other consideration, the moment the sun rises, I must have the locks on this villa changed. Again.”
That was the logical conclusion regarding the first suspect, the locksmith. After running through the scenario one last time and finding no major oversights, she turned her formidable intellect to the second suspect.
The truth was, in the cold, logical pathways of her mind, this second individual was a far, far more likely culprit.
The frustrating, almost humiliating, irony was that she now found herself in the exact same predicament as the bumbling Kishida Masayoshi: she possessed a deeply ingrained, almost certain suspicion, but lacked a single shred of tangible evidence. Not even a compelling motive. Not even a single clue that pointed unambiguously in their direction.
“If the culprit, the one hiding in this very villa that night, was Senpai… then every single contradiction, every single loose thread, is instantly, perfectly, resolved.” Yomikawa swore, a silent, bitter oath. She despised thinking this way. She despised the very structure of that sentence, its reek of cheap, detective-novel cliché.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she forced her emotions down, marshaling her focus by methodically replaying the sequence of events.
“In the pre-dawn hours of June 10th, before my own return, Senpai entered the villa. She deposited the skull of ĹŚshima Masaki, and she removed a box from the storage room, along with a collection of essays and practical reports. It is, of course, highly probable that other items were also disposed of at that time. My unfamiliarity with the villa’s original contents makes a complete inventory impossible.”
“Considering her role as Lord Mask-Taker’s… assistant… it is logical to assume that the items she removed were all directly related to that entity. The contents of the box remain an unknown variable. But the essays and reports… they almost certainly contained information she did not wish for me to see. The history of her first encounter with Lord Mask-Taker, perhaps. A chronicle of the… tasks… they performed together. Even the true reasons behind the formation of the Folklore Research Club… all could be classified as sensitive, compromising information.”
“Simply removing a few specific entries would have been a tactical error, drawing attention to those specific time periods. Therefore, the most efficient solution was a complete purge: take everything, destroy everything.”
“But that begs the question. She had already been here. She had already sanitized the premises. Why, then, did she need to return on the night of June 11th?”
“The motive remains… elusive. That, in her haste to depart, she overlooked some crucial trace evidence, some forgotten incriminating item, and was thus forced to orchestrate a second, more covert, return… it seems plausible. But this theory is undermined by the same logic that ruled out a simple thief. Why not simply deal with the oversight and depart before I returned from school? Why wait until the dead of night?”
“Unless… unless she possessed a compelling, necessary reason to wait. A reason that required her to be here late at night. A reason that, perhaps, required my presence in the house.”
“Could such a reason possibly exist?”
Her thoughts snagged on the question of Senpai’s motive. It was a knot she couldn’t untangle. Why had Senpai chosen her for the face-swap? And why the absolute, deafening silence afterwards? It was all a maddening, incomprehensible blank.
“For now, let us set aside the ‘why’.”
“For reasons yet unknown, Senpai had to return to the villa. And she needed to do so either late at night, or after I had returned. Therefore, she and Lord Mask-Taker conspired to orchestrate the event.”
“In their original, pristine plan, Senpai would have completed her task and departed the villa long before I regained consciousness. A ghost in the night, leaving no trace, no hint of her presence.”
“But they did not account for the weather. The sudden, violent downpour on the night of June 11th threw a wrench in their carefully laid plans. To leave in such a storm would have been to leave an undeniable trail of evidence. Or perhaps there was some other, unforeseen complication. In any event, she was forced to improvise.”
“As the villa’s original long-term resident, Senpai would have been intimately familiar with its quirks. She would have known that a late-night power outage in this area often meant the power would not be restored until the following morning. The blackout, therefore, was not a hindrance; it was a golden opportunity.”
“If she were to daringly conceal herself within the villa, waiting until the next day to depart, the execution would be less… elegant… than her original plan. But given the circumstances, manufacturing a classic locked-room mystery would be an acceptable, even brilliant, alternative.”
“The primary risk, of course, was me. The possibility that I might, upon waking, conduct a thorough search of the entire premises. A significant risk, yes. But given Senpai’s intimate knowledge of this house, its every hiding place, its every secret nook and cranny, combined with the absolute darkness of the power outage… the probability of her successfully remaining concealed was, from a tactical standpoint, quite high.”
“But this leads back to another, unavoidable, and deeply perplexing question. Why did Senpai feel it was necessary to open the security door, even just a crack, knowing full well the risk of leaving wet tracks on the entryway carpet?”
Opening the door implies one of two things: something went out, or something came in.
“What possible task requires the cover of darkness, or my presence in the villa, to be performed?”
“And, at the same time, requires, either before or after its completion, the opening of the main security door? Does such a bizarre confluence of circumstances, such a strange and specific set of requirements, truly exist in this world?”
Yomikawa Tsuko’s brow furrowed into a tight knot. She turned the puzzle over and over in her mind, examining the three core components – the dead of night, her own presence, the opened door – from every possible angle. The more she thought, the more she felt it, a tantalizing, almost physical sensation. She was on the absolute brink of understanding. The truth was there, hovering, just beyond the veil of her perception. But the final, crucial piece, the one that would make it all click into place, remained maddeningly, frustratingly, just out of reach.
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