Chapter 9: Betrayal
When I reached the study, the door was slightly ajar, and I heard a voice from inside.
“Come, Len, you know it’s forbidden to take her into the library. Won’t she find out?”
Those words I overheard without even attempting to made my right hand freeze on the door handle. That was the Mistress’s voice. And she said something I shouldn’t have possibly heard. Had I misheard it? The voices in the room echoed off the tell ceiling, wood walls, and floor, reaching slightly outside as well. I brought my face near the gap in the door and peered into the room. The seven had already gathered. They were scattered around the room, keeping their distance from one another. The room was dim, so I didn’t think they could notice me.
The Mistress stood next to the fireplace on the far left side, the Lady sat in the big sofa in front of the fireplace, and on the right was the Butler gazing out the window. Sitting in two armchairs closest to the door were the Doll Twins. Right and ahead from the door was the Maid sitting in a chair pulled out from the desk. And in the center of the room, under the extravagant chandelier, stood the Master with arms crossed. Everyone’s faces were stern.
“Don’t be rash. Focus on the performance, all right? It’ll be bad if she opens those coffins.”
“I just thought it might have some interesting "effects” to tell her. And there were some things I wanted to ask her directly…“
"And what if that put her on guard, hm?”
“…Look, I said "my bad.”“
"Geez! Len, are you reeeally sorry? I was listening to you two talk outside the door. You told her some pret-ty risky stuff, you know… You nearly spilled all the beans!”
“…Thought there was someone there. It was you, huh?”
“Yep! AlWAYS have to KEEP my eye on you!”
“There’s been so little excitement… Why not cut loose a little from time to time? There’s no way she isn’t going to notice we’re all getting tired of this. This… silly play business.”
“That’s cutting it a little too loose. We’re all taking this seriously. I’m glad Rin at least refrained from following up on what you did. But on the off chance something happened…”
“Meiko’s right! I was pa.s.sing through the hall, and I thought something was up with you two upstairs, so I just went to take a peek! And then what do you know…”
“…If you’re going to preach, there’s way more valid targets than me this time. Like you there - all gloomy by yourself, not taking part in the discussion. Getting so fl.u.s.tered… That was one convincing act.”
“…”
“…Miss Lukaaa? Are you okay…?”
“…Eh?”
“Everyone’s reports will influence the course of things. Luka, I’m sure you’re exhausted, but you’re a dear friend to us. Won’t you tell us what’s wrong?”
“Kaito’s right, Luka. Keep your head up! What’s that gloomy face about? If you have concerns, we can talk them out.”
“…It’s nothing, really.”
“…You’re just depressed about your crude performance, aren’t you? "Maybe this is the afterlife”… If I were in charge there, I would’ve instantly made my exit after such a dangerous line. But isn’t it fine that you managed to fool that idiot anyway? Of course, I would have easily seen through such a novice act…“
"W… What did you say?! Len… Who do you think you’re talking to, here?”
“…To our star actress. But I have the better resume, don’t I?”
“Yes, Mr. Len does have more experience than Miss Luka, and quite a lot of talent! And good looks, too…”
“…Meg, are you trying to pick a fight with me too? Don’t get so c.o.c.ky, you big-headed slowpoke!”
“W-What does that have to do with this?! You’re terrible!”
“You’re always the most useless one of us, even when we were chasing her! You’re just a pokey turtle! Is your head too heavy with all that useless knowledge?”
“Now, calm down, everyone! This is no time to be fighting. We still don’t have the letter, after all…”
“Yeah, guys! I can understand your haste, but… Well, there isn’t much time left, either…”
“…Isn’t your blunder the reason we’re all hasty, Rin?”
“Wha…”
“It was your job to steal the letter, right? If you can’t do that, how about pa.s.sing the job to me?”
“I-I can…! Just, that time I… the timing was… not the best…”
“And wasn’t it the same thing the time before that? Failed because of "bad timing.” If you can’t handle it, I’ll do it. We can’t have you dragging us down.“
”…!“
"Hey, Len, cool it. Rin’s tired, too. Girls are more delicate than you might think, you know…?”
“Ahahaha… Very funny. From that harsh look, I thought you might have a put-down like that, mister "feminist.”“
”…Um, Len…“
”…We all fall to exhaustion sometimes. It’s got nothing to do with gender, Kaito. If there’s any reason for it, it’s being in this crazed night.“
"Len…”
“Crazed… Yes, it certainly is, isn’t it. Len, you weren’t so talkative in that world, were you? You were always putting on that cool pretense. Well, but I couldn’t usually tell what you were really thinking. But you really fit right into the role of that ill-speaking doll, don’t you, cute little doll boy? Have you just turned into the real thing? Hahaha…”
“Luka, you settle down too. You two never used to fight like this… Look, we can’t be blaming and finding fault with one another. Let’s have your reports first. One after another, everyone.”
“Sigh… All right! I’m getting pretty tired of it, too… Sure, it’s for real world intervention, but I’ve made the same royal milk tea more times than I can count. It’s aaaaalways the exaaaaact saaaaame thiiiiing. I could make the same flavor with my eyes closed!”
“Ah, that’s right, Gack. You left her alone instead of keeping watch, didn’t you? Once your intervention was done, you were supposed to bring her back here. But because you left her, she went to the hall first, and Rin’s preparations were delayed. That much could be predicted from this world’s laws - if you leave her alone, she’ll surely be drawn toward that place. You have to keep an eye on her…”
“I’m sorry, Miss Meiko. Indeed, it was rash of me. However…”
“…?”
“…I know I’m not the only one who feels these methods are lukewarm.”
“…”
“What… You too, Gack…?! Len, what have you said to him?”
“Like I’d bother with that. I just did what I wanted to do.”
“Len, Gack, don’t disturb our teamwork. There’s a risk of everything going to waste with a single misstep. Until each of us produces results…”
“Haven’t I gotten results? I’ve experimented with those stairs again and again. And this time, the timing was perfect! I feel we’re almost there.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Luka. We can’t speak with certainty yet, even if we are gradually getting results. If we can’t see it through to the end… there’s no point.”
“Don’t you see all that excruciating overprudence would go out the window if she happened to notice? Len, Gack, you’re being a bit more forceful, aren’t you? It irritates me, but I have to praise Len for that. Not that I intend to cooperate…”
“Mr. Len, Miss Luka, and Mr. Gack on Team Force, versus Mr. Kaito, Miss Meiko, and Miss Rin on Team Calm… A three on three, huh! And they’re pretty evenly-matched… This is shaping up to be a good game!”
“Meg… There you go again…”
“Miss Meg, that’s a bit forceful of you to put me "Team Force.” I just thought I’d try something a little different…“
"Of course the mystery nerd would act like a detective and take a moderate position… Must be nice to be so carefree. Like Gack says, I wouldn’t go that far. We were just experimenting. Better than the rest of you, huh?”
“Mr. Len! I’m doing my part too, you know? I’m watching all of you in the most neutral way I can! A play needs a part like that, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does… if this were merely a detective story. But if we all want to cooperate together, we don’t need a neutral party.”
“That’s naïve, Miss Meiko! It’s impossible to ask this many people to all be thinking the exact same way!”
“Meg! Have you forgotten everything we practiced? We’ve always worked together…”
“That’s right, Rin. Meg and Len have been throwing off our teamwork lately.”
“Speaking of "everyone” and focusing on the whole… certainly, there’s a point that it disallows making use of our individual talents. The a.s.sembly of individuals may appear magnificent, but when it becomes a group, it can lose the ability to demonstrate its full potential…“
"To think I’d hear that from you, Gack… Look, can we all just take a break? We’re starting to go mad here.”
“I’d love to do so, but… unfortunately, we don’t have much time for it. We’ve less than a third of the time left. How worrying…”
“Hey, Kaito… What are we going to do? Guys…! Hey… Is this my fault…?”
“It’s not, Rin. In this play, we can’t speak of whose fault anything is.”
“…Oh, can’t we? Seems far worse to keep up that pampering. Sometimes a scolding is in order.”
“Len, you’ve been going too far lately. You should…”
“Ahh, at a standstill again! Always goes like this lately. Maybe Team Force is right, we should change up our methods? Besides, even if no one said anything, if one of us really showed her the lett…”
“Meg, enough. And the rest of you. Enough of this discord. …At any rate…”
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Suddenly, Luka burst into laughter. The quarrel came to a halt, and everyone stared at her. Giving off a momentary aura that monopolized the audience’s gaze, she had a deranged smile. I felt the illusion that a spotlight was fixed on her. Such overwhelming charisma… Just as her laugh was making me wonder if it would go on forever, it came to a sudden halt, and she fell silent like a wind-up doll stopping.
“Luka…?”
“Ahh, how funny…”
“…”
“…I hate this play… I HATE it!!”
She stood up and swung her left hand at a vase of roses on the table in front of her. The gla.s.s shattered with an ear-splittingly shrill sound and water pooled by her feet. The blue roses slept painfully on a bed of scattered gla.s.s shards. Silence lasted for a while. Finally, with a slight wheeze, she slumped powerlessly to the wet floor. Her trembling hands went to cover her face, and she screamed painfully.
“Putting on this same night… again and again… this play that no one’s watching!! I’ve had it, I don’t CARE anymore! …I want to go back to reality, now! To my stage, where the audience is…! You all want that too, don’t you?! DON’T you?!”
No one opened their mouths, and hard-striking rain echoed through the room. If the rain was pouring harder, then the clouds should have thickened too, yet for some reason the moonlight was brighter than before. A large branch outside the window would sometimes be slammed into the window by the wind, making an irregular sound like someone knocking from outside. I put my hands tight to my chest, as if to silence my pulse pounding amid the silence.
“Luka… What are you saying? See, we really ought to rest. I’ve said it again and again, but you’re surely tired. Don’t push yourself…”
Meiko spoke worriedly to break the silence, approached Luka as she stared hollowly at nothing, and held out her hand. Luka continued to gloomily stare dumbfounded into s.p.a.ce, and looking as if she didn’t understand why there was a hand there, spoke.
“…What? I just honestly said what I was thinking. The thing that everyone is thinking deep down… I said it for you, as a representative…”
“…A representative? Well… I would be lying to say I didn’t think that too, a little. I can’t help but pine for the beer I had on the foyer. And sometimes I have such a craving for those cheese sandwiches we often had for dinner. I’d love to have one of those fun nights drinking cheap beer and partying again. But… Not alone. Onceeveryone returns together, I want to do that with all of you.”
“Meiko… I agree. Listen, Luka! Did you forget that vow? We’ve all worked hard together. We’ve finally made it this far…”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten that abominable night… Even if I wanted to, it sticks in my head like it only just happened. It makes me just want to forget it all at this point… like her. And just go mad… A crazy night… Just like the t.i.tle says!”
“What?! No, what I meant is…”
“Looking at it as an overall play… the decadent beauty of such an ending could be considered a perfection of the art form. Quite magnificent.”
“Hey, stop it! Don’t say that, Mr. Gack… Hey, Kaito!”
Rin stood up, ran to Kaito in the center, and clung to his left arm. A common sight… I always saw her clinging to his arm, like a child clinging to a parent. In her small doll body, she could barely even reach his arm. He stooped down slightly and patted her head, saying it would be okay. His hand nearly covered the Doll Girl’s head. Rin had the same scared look as when she showed me the stray cat she picked up.
“Miss Luka, you’re pretty weak-minded, huh? Giving in to something like this…!”
“Because I’m not a dunce like you. I bet you could get on just fine by yourself, trapped in a place like this. Shameless… You love it, don’t you? This crazed world…”
“It’s not like I like this at all! Sure, I enjoy reasoning and making up stories in my head, but really…”
“…"When they actually become reality, then no thanks,” hm? Well, you seem to get quite a kick out of it, considering. …I’ve been thinking. Could it be that you…You…“
"I tell you, I’m not having fun at aaall! I just know it’s a necessity to put on a droll character in such a gloomy situation…”
“…Droll character, huh… More "oddball” than anything, aren’t you?“
"You too, Len?!”
“Ahaha, you said it. All the scripts you write have characters like that, don’t they. They help keep a good balance. But don’t you think always striking a balance that way is a bit lukewarm… a bit boring? True art, you know, is much more piercing!”
“…!”
“…I favor that viewpoint, too. Going "too far” is just right. Any less, and nothing gets through.“
Meg bit her lip regretfully at Luka and Len’s comments.
"My, so you feel that way too, Len? Yes, we don’t like always thinking with our heads. Following intuition, our natural senses… that makes us feel alive. We’re simply not suited for something so dull as "working together to acc.u.mulate results” in the first place!“
Meiko grimaced and admonished Luka.
”…Luka, I know… no, we all know you’ve been cooperating with us. Please, don’t trample on those memories any more…“
”…True. Then we’ll all go mad together.“
"If we’re going on about this, we already have…”
“I kinda noticed at the point where Mr. Gack stopped chiding me for my slip-ups…”
“…Back in reality, I never once got into an argument with all of you. How bizarre this has become. But… it’s not bad.”
“Stop… Stop it… Guys…”
“Ahahaha! Yes, we’re mad! All of us, already! Ahh, how funny!”
“Hey, Luka! Stop this right here.”
“Say, Kaito, did you always have such a melancholy face? All your usual seducing has gone poof, just like that… You used to be so moonstruck year-round. But now, you’re the strict master of the mansion… Always with that bored, brow-furrowed face of grief. Maybe it’s become no longer an act. Or perhaps… you can’t fight your blood after all? It was the slovenly womanizer who was just an act to drop our guards… and this is how you really are?”
“…!!”
“…Oh my. Was I right? So sorry.”
Kaito’s right hand which he held out to chastise Luka came to a stop, and he stared as if caught in a lie.
“…Well, then it’s a good thing you have such a fitting role, Miss Luka. Your selfish att.i.tude just got an upgrade, and you’re more malicious than ever. Now, you might be perfect for a lead villain!”
“…Look who’s talking.”
“A lead villain? Well, that’s just peachy. A villain is always in a powerful position. Why, villain or hero, it’s all the same! To play a part is to become someone who isn’t you… And to do that, you need to deceive everyone around you… even fooling yourself, yes?! For so, so long we’ve fooled ourselves… and long forgotten who we really are! Oh, the COMEDY!! AHAHAHAHA!”
Luka again opened her mouth wide and laughed loudly, her eyes filled with madness. A string stretched to its limits had snapped. That triggered everyone to hurl slander at each other; by the end, they even scorned, refused, and abused themselves. Lurking behind a beautiful and orderly facade was something that would never be shown on stage: their true faces, uncouth and human. How filthy and ugly it was. As I watched this repulsive scene, my eyes and ears were fixated on them, like I was bound to my seat.
“…You look pale. Luka, someone will take over for you, and you can get back to your room for tonight…”
“Oh, I’m fine. We’ll put an end to this now… Yes, we’ll put an end to all of this, this whole night!”
Luka yelled with eyes open wide. Everyone froze with surprise at the mention of “putting an end to this.” Silence fell again. Rin, who’d watched the fight anxiously while clinging to Kaito, slowly stepped toward Luka.
“…Hey. Do you really want to make all our effort go to waste? That’s just foolish. I misjudged you, Luka…”
Rin stood at the same height as Luka sitting on the floor, and met her deranged gaze directly. Unlike when she was afraid, her face now had a cold look, and emitted a threatening aura hard to imagine from her small body. The two stared each other down, and Luka was the first to turn away. As if readjusting her posture, she sighed loudly, stood up, and spoke looking down on the small Doll Girl.
“…Rin, always playing the good girl… But I know you can’t help feeling lonely either. I know you want to escape from here…”
“It’s been hard for me, and my body’s turned into this… Some of it’s more than I can bear. But everyone else is here, so I can’t give in yet, can I?”
The Doll Girl’s little hands moved to grab something hidden under her collar.
“Hmm. Well then, could you live here your whole life?”
“Well, I mean… I’m sure someday…”
“That locket… You’re always talking at it with tears welling up, aren’t you?”
“!! W-What are you talking about…”
Rin’s shoulders shook.
“My station is the second floor corridor and stairs… I can see you down in the hall easily. Whenever she’s not around, you’re always squatting and talking into it… "I can’t take it, come help, I’m sorry”…“
”…! I-It’s not like dad…“
”…My, so it was your father. It was too far away for me to see the photo inside. So you want your father to come save you? Ah, but… who knows if he’ll even come to see the likes of you!“
”…hh…“
Rin’s face visibly went pale. She trembled, and her small hands covered her face. Gradually, she started to breathe heavily, like she’d just run a marathon.
"Miss Rin!! Are you okay?! Please, breathe slowly!”
Meg instantly responded and held Rin up as she looked about to faint.
“Ahh, so even that doll body can hyperventilate. How fuuunny…”
Whap.
A dry sound rang out. Meiko had walked up to Luka and forcefully smacked her by the left cheek.
“Too far. Don’t you know things have limits?”
“Heehee… Oh, ouuuch. It really hurts… like it were real!”
“…”
Meiko and Luka stared at each other quietly. Luka grinned in desperation, like nothing mattered to her anymore, and Meiko didn’t even try to hide her intense fury toward her. It was an explosive situation.
“Ahaha. I haven’t seen Rin be talked down like that in a long time.”
“…Len. Enough of your teasing. What good will it do to bring us even further apart?”
Meiko reprimanded Len for his joking comment on the tense situation between the two, keeping her stern gaze. She was said to have once lived a rough life where she would answer to any fight picked with her. Now, she was the most concerned for those around her, and tried to mellow the situation, but if the quarrel escalated into a scuffle… she would probably be the victor.
She glared coldly at Len. That glare must have been congatious; the temperate in the room seemed to drop. Even I, hiding outside the door, trembled a little. Her anger was frightening. But why was it…? The angrier she got, and the more the others quarreled terribly, an indescribable exaltation welling up from my heart. I felt like I was watching an amusing play.
“Scary…! But I’m not particularly trying to drive anyone apart. Ahh… I see. So that’s his aim…”
“His what…? Are you trying to give me the slip?”
“No, no. I don’t have any intent of causing discord between everyone. I’m just doing what only I can do. Maybe doing the same thing over and over for an absurdly long time has driven us mad. But that seems obvious, given the situation. No matter how tough your mind is, when you’re in a situation like this, it’s more bizarre to stay sane. So now, things are finally getting interesting.”
“Hah… Sounds like you want a whack too, do you…?”
Fires of rage burned in Meiko’s eyes. She turned her body toward Len and took a step forward, but a little hand grabbed it. Rin, who was still breathing roughly, looked up at her silently with tears in her big eyes. Seeing this, the flames died down, with nowhere to go. Meiko took a deep breath to calm herself.
Meg, stroking Rin’s back from beside her, took the chance to ask a question.
“Um… Mr. Len, you said "his aim”…? Who do you mean?“
"I mean the mastermind. Stories need action. A play that’s all lulls and no conflict, all comfort and pretend friendship, is just boring, isn’t it? He’s watching as close as he can get… There needs to be more excitement.”
Len slowly stood up from his armchair and moved to the center of the room.
“…I’ve been thinking about this a while.”
The Doll Boy’s round, gla.s.s-like blue eyes wavered eerily in the soft orange light of the chandelier.
“The mastermind… He’s really among us, isn’t he?”
“Huh…? Mr. Len, what…”
“The one who invited us from reality to Crazy ∞ nighT… The one who wrote the invitation letter that night… The legendary playwright, Burlet.”
The words directed at no one in particular made the remaining six look up toward Len with a start, faces full of surprise and fear. Everyone froze like stone statues watching his mouth, waiting for his next words. But for some time, he didn’t have them.
Kaito regained composure quickest, and spoke in a serious tone.
“…What do you mean, Len?”
“I always thought it was strange. That night, it was just us eight there. No one else. And now, too… it’s just us.”
My heart jumped. Did he know I was out here, hiding behind the door…? I held my hands tighter and shut my eyes.
“That’s right. Though I was the last to come in… That night, too, everyone else went home before us…”
“But… We’re talking about someone capable of truly strange things. He wouldn’t necessarily look like a normal person, even. Maybe he can, say, make himself invisible at will. Or maybe he’s not human at all? Like a ghost… or a supernatural being.”
“…Maybe. It’s clear he’s not just an ordinary person. But it’s also a fact he existed as a human in the past. Though… then, too, his face, personality, age, lineage… Most information about him was hidden. But I feel something else amiss besides that. I’ve been feeling like someone’s watching me up close… with the perspective of an audience member simply enjoying the play.”
“An audience member… up close? You say you sensed them watching?”
“In that letter, the mastermind wrote: I’m always watching the play up close. But they didn’t say from where exactly. Say this were a world inside a book, and they could just turn the pages whenever they wanted… viewing us from the outside world. I considered it might be a very detached kind of viewing like that. But…”
Len came to a stop to think. Then he put his left index finger to his lips, and turned his gaze right and down. He looked toward the blue roses Luka had knocked off the table earlier, sleeping restlessly on the white sheets of the shattered vase.
“If it were me… If I were the mastermind, where would I watch this play from…? …I would slip among the actors, become one myself, and watch as I performed alongside them. That would be most enjoyable…”
“…!”
A heavy silence fell with Len’s suggestion, and time seemed to stop.
The mastermind is among us? Burlet himself…?!
Time, temporarily stopped from fright and tension, resumed with a sigh. Kaito, the oldest, had been raised to become a leader, so he could regain composure from even the most shocking events.
“Your intuition is often correct, so it scares me… But could you tell us what evidence led you to think that?”
“…Sure. When Rin started hyperventilating, and Luka got slapped by Meiko… I felt it. When you put on a good play, a sense of delight and excitement comes from the crowd… something completely different from the excitement from a fight. An emotion full of pure expectation and curiosity… and I’m sure I sensed it coming from somewhere in this room. Though I can’t pinpoint who.”
“It can’t be…! One of us…? One of us was watching this awful discord and enjoying it?!”, Meiko retorted at Len with anger.
“Well… Who knows if they were pleased. But maybe they were enjoying it as a play?”
“…I see now.”
Kaito spoke up with a bitter smile.
“We’ve all been in this together, haven’t we? No such mingling could happen; we’ve been friends for years, and we can still fondly remember our time since meeting to now… That’s undoubtable, is it not?! You’re not suggesting that someone’s been possessed by the ghost of Burlet, are you?”
“Who knows… I just had a hunch of sorts that he was among us. I didn’t say I had solid proof. That’s why I’ve been looking for some.”
“Actually, I’ve thought that myself. The night of the incident, there wasn’t anyone but those of us here now, was there?”
Meg hummed and added her own suppositions.
“If we suppose Burlet is among us, then he would be over a hundred years old…! So for him to just blend in would mean he can change his form at will. But then, determining a person’s personality and past experiences just from their actions would be hard, huh? Which makes it possible that all of that person’s behavior and everything in the real world was just fabricated.”
“But it’s just conjecture, yes? It’s not certain he’s here…”, Meiko insisted, fl.u.s.tered.
“If we can make the conjecture, then it’s a possibility.” Gack spoke chidingly with concern.
“…Maybe just like we’re fooling Miss Miku, he could be fooling us too.”
The cutting words. .h.i.t me like a knife in my chest. At once, I was torn away from the play I was watching unfold before me, back into reality.
All this time, I’d yearned for a voice to finally say my name - but as soon as I heard it, the faint light of hope I saw went out. The fearful possibility I kept out of my thoughts as soon as it popped up… that everyone else was leaving me out, and tricking me… That terrible idea was now confirmed as reality. “Miku, you lack insight. Miku, you’re honest and easy to fool… So you’d be a good audience member” - it was just as I’d been told.
I mixed in with the comedy they were putting on, and thought I’d become an actor on the same standing as them. But that foolish girl wasn’t their friend and colleague, just their audience. And certainly not the star of the show. If they were being fooled by a greater mastermind… What an absurd comedy this was.
“But now we’ve proven ourselves capable of considering the possibility. Maybe we were able to splash him with some cold water, hm?
”…No…“
Kaito denied Meiko’s bluff with a deep crease in his brow.
”…I’m sure he’s delighted deep down. Thinking, “so they finally noticed”…“
Len picked up after Kaito. For the nth time, an oppressive silence came over the room.
"But… Really, who could it be…?”, Rin mumbled, her head hung low.
Everyone’s faces stiffened, and not wanting to look at one another, focused their ears on the eerie silence. If anyone made a wrong blink, sigh, gaze, gesture, remark… even an irregular heartbeat in this situation would make the other six apprehend them at once. They all strained their senses to endure, like a beast that had wandered into a hunting ground and had to lay low until the humans left; their tension was very evident.
“Everyone’s suspicious… That’s what I think. Of course, you all think that about me too, so your silence is really painful to my ears…”
Meg opened her mouth first. The lover of cla.s.sical mysteries and writing, who had worked on scripts of her own, was the easiest to suspect at a glance. She was trying to fill the distance before everyone else pointed fingers at her. Meiko looked at her, lowering her eyebrows.
“Sigh… You said it yourself when we sat down for tea. More often than not, the most suspicious person isn’t the culprit. I understand that you aren’t, and honestly, I don’t want to suspect anyone. Say that the mastermind is among us. Then so what? What does that change? There’s only one ending we seek. That won’t change one bit, will it?”
Meiko lied. What Meg had told her was that the most suspicious person was initially considered to be the killer, but as the story proceeded, those doubts were painted as misdirection. However, it was a common pattern in mysteries that ultimately, even that was part of the plan, and the person thought most suspicious at the start was, indeed, the culprit. I had heard Meiko and Meg’s conversation myself. Yes, from behind a door in secret, just like now.
“…My, I hope so,” Luka said, eyes seeming to doubt everyone else in the room.
“If there is a mastermind among us, deceiving us… Identifying who it is may not have any impact on their goal, nor the completion of our objective. Surely you’re well aware of why that is, yes?”
Everyone’s doubtful eyes suddenly widened, like Kaito’s words reminded them of something. Slowly, they turned to unease and fear.
“Yes… Kaito is right. Even if we go hunting down the mastermind, I can’t imagine it’ll be of much benefit to us,” Gack remarked with a distressed tone.
“Hmm… And it’s possible our goal and the mastermind’s overlap!”
“There’s a good deal we’ve learned, you know. Slowly but surely, we’re reaching our objective. With each repet.i.tion, we learn more about the rules that govern this play world.”
Kaito summed up his opinions to control the situation which could soon turn sour again, and Meg and Gack added their own persuading comments. Even knowing the mastermind who sucked them into this world could have been among them, they were somehow gaining back their usual team ethic.
Rin raised her head, stood up, and spoke with light in her eyes.
“We’re almost there. We’ve gotten to a pretty good spot. There’s just… somethingwe’re missing still… I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, certainly. Our actions are causing minor deviations. If only by a little, time in the real world is being shortened. Interference is gradually occurring between that night and this world. But of course, we can’t precisely measure the effect it’s having on reality. Even so, we’ve learned it’s not just futile.”
“True… But I still think we need to avoid slipping up in haste at any cost. We can’t have another mistake like that night again…”
“…Yes, I know.”
The mention of “that night” seemed to change the mood in the room. Their expressions were almost deranged in their seriousness, and the group seemed united under achieving a specific goal. Awed by that impression, my clenched hands started to sweat.
“The important thing is the letter. Rin failed this time. Does someone have a followup plan?”
“…”
“We should act quickly, before time is up again.” Gack stared at his left arm as if checking a watch he wasn’t wearing.
“All right, if it’s come to this… It might be a bit rough, but I don’t care how you do it. Just get the letter.”
“You know, she seems a lot more wary than usual this time. I’m thinking that afteran ending like that, a few fragments of her forgotten memories of it stuck around, influencing her thoughts. She didn’t even drink my second cup of tea…”
“Ah, that’s right… She completely dodged the collaboration between Meg and I. And since Len went and showed her the past scripts, she’s probably even more on guard now.”
“Well, there’s no time… This night can end BaD too if it means successes next time. It was a dangerous bet taking her into the library then… But personally, I got some good information out of it.”
“But… I’m scared. Hey, Kaito… If it turns out like before again…”
At some point, Rin had returned to Kaito’s side.
“Yes. We won’t let ourselves be killed… The true ending won’t require our deaths.”
“We have to protect the fact that she died… and the contents of the coffins. If we can’t do so, we’ll never return to reality. No matter what, Miku can’t know the truth. She can’t go back to reality like this.”
“Miss Meiko’s right. The lead role of this play will die, even if she says and does nothing. That’s her fate… Because it’s the law of this world…”
“My, do I feel sorry for her…”
“It’s inevitable if we’re going to bring her back from the grave. That’s what our objective is, isn’t it…?”
“Len… You’re right. Yes, we understand.”
“Well. Let’s end the meeting here. She’ll probably be finishing her search of the stockroom and coming up here soon. It’s full of junk, so I’m sure it’ll take some time to search it all carefully, but…”
I was so shocked, I forgot to even breathe, intently listening in on the long conversation.
Thump -
“……………Miku? Are you there?”
The wind outside howled as usual. The branch by the window would occasionally whack into it, making a knock-like sound.
“It seems it’s just the wind. It’s part of the script for the storm outside to get most intense around this time. The climax is approaching… Is it time for the thunder effect…?”
Gack stood looking out the window. But my back was already turned, and I only heard part of his words.