After the incident, I missed three days of class trying to process it. But, personally, I didn't have anywhere to go back to except the school dorms on campus, which meant my classmates and dormmates and even people like the little squirrel-like girl from the crafts club could come out of their way to express their concern. I had thought that I didn't have any close friends or even just casual pals I could rely on, but having so many people concerned for me might just make me happy enough to make up for it. I was able to reflect upon that daily life from a new perspective.
Kyouko Kirigiri had apparently gone back to class the very next day, just like normal. I heard the name Kyouko Kirigiri over the school broadcast system, as she was called into the middle school staff room. It was hard for me to think of us attending the same school as just a weird coincidence. That murder case had been too surreal, and meeting Kyouko Kirigiri during it made her seem just as surreal. And yet, here she was, undoubtedly here in the real world as just a regular girl attending middle school.
Five days after the incident—I went to peek into the middle school building during lunch break. I asked Kirigiri's homeroom teacher what classroom she was in.
In the classroom were rows of young, fresh faces in their first year of middle school, Kyouko Kirigiri's among them.
She was sitting by the window, propping her chin in her hands and gazing outside. All around her were girls who had pushed their desks together to eat lunch, and girls who were chattering away like chirping baby chicks. On one hand, seeing Kyouko Kirigiri in the middle of all that made her seem lonely, but thinking of it another way, she had melted completely into the background of the classroom, like a shadow.
A murmur went through the classroom as the girls started noticing me peeking in. Those murmurs finally spread over to Kirigiri, and at last, she noticed me as well.
Our eyes met.
But, as if nothing was amiss, she just went back to staring blankly out the window.
"Wait, why are you ignoring me?" I entered the classroom and went up to stand next to her. I put my hands on my hips, staring down at her. Everyone else in the classroom was watching us, now. Even the girls who had been chatting fell silent. "If it's because you don't want to talk here, then let's step outside for a bit." I dragged Kirigiri out with me, half by force. I'm sure we became the subject of a lot of classroom gossip as soon as we left.
Kirigiri and I went all the way out to the deserted entrance of the building. We huddled together in the shadow of the shoe lockers, as if we were hiding.
Kirigiri leaned back against the lockers, crossing her arms. "Do you need something?" she asked, looking up at me. She sounded indifferent, but it didn't seem like she was in a bad mood. This was probably just what she was like.
"Did you hear that Asakura-san died? It was even in the newspaper. They're calling it an accident."
"I expected that that would happen as soon as I realized he had been taken by the Committee. Perhaps he understood as much himself—that he had reached his end." Kirigiri looked down at the ground, letting out a sigh.
"Does the Committee kill the losers of the Duel Noir?"
"I wonder? That may be so, at least in the event that they cannot pay for the tricks that they purchased."
"No way..." I put a hand on the lockers, hanging my head.
Kirigiri's small head was right in front of mine. I suddenly glanced to the side and noticed a gaggle of girls in middle school uniforms watching us. When they noticed me looking at them, they quickly hid.
After the incident, we were famous now, apparently. We'd been reported as ordinary people who were caught up in the case. There hadn't been any mention of us being involved as detectives.
"Hey, Kirigiri-chan. This isn't over, is it?" "What do you mean?"
"The Victims' Catharsis Committee—we can't just leave them be! The way Asakura-san was talking, it sounds like lots of other games like that are happening. If that's true, we'd be turning a blind eye to a criminal organization."
"Yui-oneesama... You really do intend to be a hero through and through, don't you?"
I was actually a little happy to hear that she was still going to call me onee-sama. Once we'd left the crime scene, I had even thought that our relationship might have reset completely—but apparently not.
"Those who aim to play the hero are almost always the first to die."
"So you mean they put their life on the line," I replied with pride. "I have the resolve to risk my life as a detective, too. You don't own the rights to that one."
"I suppose..." Kirigiri looked up at me. Her eyes were right in front of mine. "What's wrong? Does it make you anxious?"
"No." Kirigiri quickly shook her head, before hesitantly continuing, "Ever since that day, I've been thinking about the detective Inuzuka."
"A detective who solves his own crimes, huh? Just despicable."
"To me, a detective has always been... a disciple of the fixed and unwavering truth. So I took pride in being a detective. However..." There, she paused, and shut her mouth abruptly, as if chastising herself for saying too much.
"It's okay. You can tell me," I said.
Her gaze meandered for a moment before finally looking back up at me. Those anxious, entreating eyes were more weak and fleeting of an expression than she'd ever shown me before. "Detectives are not absolute... I had neglected that obvious fact far too much. I was simply a little surprised to realize it," she said, and ducked her head.
I ignored the girls who were peering over at us, clearly wanting to say something, and instead I set my hand on Kirigiri's head. "To me, you were nothing short of an angel who had descended with the truth. I was only able to return to my daily life because you were there."
"Daily life..." Kirigiri murmured, parroting the phrase as if she was unfamiliar with the term, before falling silent.
"Are you free after school today? There's somewhere I want to go, so do you want to come with?"
"Somewhere you want to go?"
"The Detective Library. The key to unlocking the secrets of the Victims' Catharsis Committee might be in there."
After a long silence, Kirigiri nodded. "Then let's meet back here after school."
I left before I could even see her acknowledge what I had said, heading out through the front door. The middle school girls parted to let me through.
"A date—it's a date," I told them, and they squealed in shrill reply. I heard their voices behind me as I went back to my own school building.
I returned to that same entrance after school, and found Kirigiri sitting on the corner of the stairs, reading a book. I stopped abruptly to observe her. Her eyes ran over the words with enthusiasm. Her face from the side looked so innocent that I could never tell just by looking at her that she was a detective who had solved a bloody murder case. She looked perfectly like a page in a picture book, sitting there after school reading a book as other students hurried home all around her.
Kirigiri noticed my gaze on her, and looked up at me. "Were you watching me?"
"Aahh, sorry." I ran up to her. "You were just so cute."
"You like to tease, don't you?"
"What are you reading that you like so much? Wait, don't tell me! It's Soji Shimada's new work, right?"
"No. It's a notebook." She showed me the black cover of the notebook. Oh yeah, now that she mentions it, I did see her with that before. She stood up from her step, patting the dirt off of the back of her skirt. "Everything I learned about detectives from Grandfather is written in here."
"I'm amazed that even at a time like this, all you can think about is research." "This is my daily life."
"Right, well, considering where we're going, it might be for the best to brace ourselves."
We departed from the building's entrance together, cutting across the campus to pass through the old school gates. We walked together silently, side by side, with nothing in particular worth talking about. Even the shopping district, with its Christmas music playing, was nothing more than an irrelevant backdrop to us.
We waited at the bus stop for the bus to come.
There was still some snow underfoot, which easily crumbled with the kick of a foot. I played around kicking the snow like that as I waited for the bus. Kirigiri didn't join in even once the whole time we were waiting.
The bus came. Kirigiri and I sat next to each other. Did the other passengers maybe see us as two schoolgirls who were good friends? I thought that I'd like them to.
"Has anything changed since then?" I asked. "Changed?"
"I mean, it's not like we heard a bunch of secrets about the Victims' Catharsis Committee from Asakura-san or anything. Right? I don't really understand the whole thing, but maybe if we know secrets about a huge criminal organization, we might be in the crosshairs now... That's just what I've been thinking about.
"There have been no particular irregularities in my surroundings."
"Did your grandfather say anything? I want to hear what his opinion is on all this. You're like, apprenticed to him, right?"
"Grandfather is currently in Los Angeles. I told him about the case over the phone, but he didn't seem very concerned. So I can assume this incident wasn't dire enough to draw his attention."
"Hmmmm..."
Her grandfather was apparently a pretty big deal. Was this little girl going to grow up to be a famous globetrotting detective like him someday?
"But Grandfather did mention one point of interest."
"Aaand?"
"It seems he was involved in the founding of the Detective Library."
"Huhhh... That's pretty amazing, right? How big of a detective family are you guys?" I was surprised by her upbringing all over again. I already knew that her pride as a detective was completely out of the ordinary, but that was probably instilled in her by her family, wasn't it? Seriously—what kind of place was the Kirigiri household? "I mean, I'm from a completely ordinary family myself."
"Despite that, you still say you'd risk your life as a detective. Where did you get such resolve, I wonder?" Kirigiri watched me with eyes full of suspicion.
"Do you doubt me?"
"No, not really." She turned to look out the window.
"You're still mad I suspected you so much before, aren't you? I'm really sorry about that." "I'm not really mad."
"Well, that would be nice if it were true..."
The view outside of the window gradually became a quiet, high-class residential area. There were large trees growing on the side of the road at regular intervals, and their barren, pointed branches reached up into the grey sky. It was a strangely deserted street.
"Next stop, Detective Library—Detective Library—" announced the bus. "I'll let you press the button to let us get off, Kirigiri-chan."
"I never said I wanted to press it."
"I'm gonna press it then. Are you okay with that?" "Go ahead."
"...No, let's press it together after all. On three—" "Just hurry up and press it."
"Heheh, it was just a joke!" I leaned over her to press the button by the window.