NOVEL NEXT Ch. 18
Chapter 18
After asking his question, Fushimi Shika stood up to leave.
Tamako-chan, not understanding what was happening, followed behind him chattering nonstop. The latter descended the stairs in silence, but just as he stepped over the threshold of the ground-floor entrance, he suddenly pulled back.
"Ah, it's raining," Tamako-chan said.
A gray dot appeared on the white tiled ground, then a second, a third... Raindrops linked into threads, weaving a heavy curtain of water.
Dark clouds blotted out the sun, hanging so low that Fushimi Shika felt he could touch them from the rooftop.
"What do we do now?" Tamako-chan pressed.
She had absolutely no leads, her vaunted deductive abilities utterly useless, reduced to tailing Fushimi Shika like an idiot asking "why" over and over... Though the frustration gnawed at her, bringing the killer to justice would make this small humiliation worthwhile.
"We do nothing," Fushimi Shika said.
"Huh? We're just going to let her walk free?"
"Exactly." Fushimi Shika turned to her. "She's been walking free for sixteen years—what's a few more days?"
"What does that mean? New evidence in a few days?" Tamako-chan was completely lost.
"Wait. We'll talk when the rain stops."
Fushimi Shika had finally pieced it together—the sixteen-year-old hit-and-run, Ishizuka Kazuo's revenge plot, Nagano Kawai's deduction game... Everything connected in his mind into a single thread.
This was Kawai's puzzle. Beneath the truth lay carefully crafted lies.
No matter how Tamako-chan pleaded or questioned, he refused to utter another word, leaving her to stew in her frustration.
The afternoon brought standard firearms training followed by two theory sessions, ending at 5:30. Tamako-chan refused to give up, trailing Fushimi Shika relentlessly until he finally snapped:
"Instead of badgering me for answers, why don't you use your own brain? Aren't you supposed to be some kind of deduction genius? Can't even solve a simple puzzle?"
Tamako-chan froze, a wave of crushing defeat washing over her.
Recalling Kawai's comforting words in the cafeteria now felt bitterly ironic. Kawai had such faith in her, yet she couldn't even decipher Kawai's clues...
Standing in the corridor, Tamako-chan hung her head as Fushimi Shika walked away.
The rain continued its assault. Lightning split the clouds, momentarily bleaching the world black and white, stretching their shadows into long ribbons. Four, five seconds later, thunder lit the corridor again—only Tamako-chan's solitary shadow remained, trembling.
She wiped her tears, eyes hardening with resolve, and turned back toward the classroom.
Even without Fushimi Shika, even fighting alone, she'd find the evidence and make the criminal pay!
The classroom stood empty, cadets rushing to dinner. Tamako-chan stepped to the podium and spread out the diary page.
She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and cleared her mind of all distractions.
This time, she took an absolutely objective stance, rebuilding the cold case from scratch. Moments later, her eyes snapped open.
Just as Fushimi Shika had said—it was a "simple puzzle."
Sakurai Chizuru couldn't possibly have kept a diary for sixteen years, much less recorded her crimes in it. Who writes their true thoughts in a diary? And what appears in a diary can never be one's true thoughts. From the start, stealing the diary was doomed to fail.
So who misled her by claiming the diary contained evidence of the crime?
First: Fushimi Shika. He likely wanted blackmail material on Sakurai Chizuru's private life, which was why he pushed this scheme. Temporarily ruling him out.
Second: Ishizuka Kazuo. Stealing the diary was part of his revenge plan, but what made him so certain it contained "shameful secrets"? Moreover, with only two transcribers at the academy, posting copied diary pages on the bulletin board was practically turning himself in.
Going further back—when Fushimi Shika questioned him, Ishizuka Kazuo had been remarkably cooperative, answering whatever was asked... which reminded Tamako-chan of Shiraishi Hidenori.
No matter what Fushimi Shika asked, Shiraishi would only answer "yes."
—What if Ishizuka Kazuo was lying?
—What if his daughter didn't die in a car accident?
"When one clue directly points to another, there's a ninety percent chance it's fabricated. Such neat interconnections are rare coincidences that only appear in detective novels."
Fushimi Shika's words echoed in her mind.
The anonymous letter led to red ink, red ink led to Ishizuka Kazuo, who then revealed the murder and pointed to the diary—each link bore Kawai's fingerprints.
It was Kawai who told her the class leader was secretly helping Instructor Sakurai investigate the letter sender.
It was Kawai who picked the lock so they could find the anonymous letter in the office.
It was Kawai who discovered only one person in Academic Affairs used that particular red ink.
Everything connected too smoothly, like a pre-written script.
"Instructor Sakurai was hired five years ago. Ishizuka Kazuo has worked at the academy for eight years. They've coexisted peacefully all this time—why would Ishizuka suddenly seek revenge now?"
Fushimi Shika's words rang again.
This time, she had the answer.
—Because the avenger wasn't Ishizuka Kazuo, but Nagano Kawai.
She enrolled in April, met Instructor Sakurai, and only then did the anonymous letter incident begin.
Nagano Kawai tore out this diary page for a reason—July 13-16 was Obon. The diary started on July 12, the day her younger brother died in the car accident.
—July 12 was her brother's memorial day.
This diary page contained no criminal evidence; the page itself was Kawai's declaration of war.
She had been silently hinting to Tamako-chan all along.
The hit-and-run murder did exist, but the victim wasn't Ishizuka's daughter, and it wasn't a sixteen-year-old cold case.
"Prepare yourself. I'll make you pay."
Just as Nagano Kawai wrote in her letter—she would take revenge on Sakurai Chizuru.
This entire line of reasoning wasn't deduction at all, but Tamako-chan channeling Fushimi Shika's thinking, operating on the principle that "no one can be trusted," guessing step by step until she arrived at this "conspiracy theory."
Yes, there was no proof.
But Tamako-chan's intuition screamed that this was the truth.
Though many questions remained—why Ishizuka Kazuo would lie for Kawai, why Kawai kept feeding her clues—at this moment, she couldn't afford to wait.
"Please let me be wrong..."
Eyes red, Tamako-chan sprinted downstairs, plunged into the downpour toward the cafeteria. Under everyone's stunned gazes, she found the class leader, urgently asking where Instructor Sakurai was.
"Ah, the instructor's busy," the class leader scratched his head, whispering, "She's giving Fushimi special guidance."