It had happened again. Only 3 days from Rantaro's gruesome demise, somebody else had decided that they didn't want to live here any more and bloodied their hands to escape. Kaede forced herself to look at Miu's corpse again. Even she, always so tall and intimidating, looked so vulnerable in death.
Next to her, K1-BO stifled his robot equivalent of a sob, eyes actually watering. He knew her best, after all, both being the 'tech squad' of the Ultimate Academy. But there was more than a practical reason for them being close. Their bond was like that of Shuichi and Kaede, tied together by a mutual trust, a liking for each other. But now that bond was severed.
What would Kaede do, if it was Shuichi lying dead on the cold hard dining room floor instead?
She forced those thoughts aside and tried to focus on the current situation. "Oh god..." she choked out.
"It really has happened once more," Korekiyo sighed sadly. "How unfortunate..."
"So it seems like someone's finally hit the bullet, then!" Monokuma's familiar voice whined behind them, and Kaede glared at him, eyes stinging.
"This is your fault!" Tenko yelled, tears rolling down her face.
"No, no! The headmaster never directly commits, remember? It's in the rules. So, this is your own fault. I'm just here to give you this! Your technically second Monokuma File!"
He revealed a sleek tablet, not unlike the Monopads. "Well, have fun! The Class Trial starts soon, so you really should get some investigating done!"
Shuichi took the file and the two of them looked at the writing on it. It went as follows:
<hr>
<b>The victim is Miu Iruma, the Ultimate Inventor.</b>
<b>The victim's body was found in the Dining Hall.</b>
<b>The time of death is approximately 7 am.</b>
<b>The body bears stab wounds along the legs, but the fatal blow seems to be a deep slash in the neck. A kitchen knife was close to the victim, and playing cards were scattered around the body, along with a card stabbed into the fatal wound.</b>
<hr>
Shuichi frowned. "7 am? But the Dining Hall rules state that it's out of bounds before 8 am. How did the body end up in the Dining room?"
That was a good question, and Kaede forced herself to go closer to the body to try and answer it, and ended up stepping on one of the cards that were splattered with blood. She yelped and jumped back hurriedly, picking up the card.
"Hey...Himiko, isn't this from the deck that you gave Miu to cheer her up yesterday?" she asked, passing it to the mage, who had been cowering in fear at the back of the room.
"Nyeh?" she looked at the card. "Yeah, it looks like it. But does it matter...?"
"Of course it matters! It proves that Himiko is the culprit!" Kokichi shouted.
"H-huh?" Himiko sweated. "I-I'm not the culprit!"
"Of course you are! Liars know liars, and <b>you</b> don't look very innocent now..." Kokichi wagged his finger accusingly.
"Stop accusing Yumeno-san, you degenerate male!" Tenko screamed, making a battle pose, but Kirumi gently held her back.
"I'm sorry Chabashira-san, but please try not to disturb the crime scene. Besides, there is absolutely no way that she is the killer. She would have been able to cause these stab wounds, nor would she be able to make the fatal slash; she is not tall enough,"
"But..." K1-BO bent down. "If Tojo-san's theory is correct, there are only 4 people here who are tall enough to k-kill Miu. Tojo, Momota, Shinguji, and Gokuhara."
"It couldn't have been Tojo or Shinguji," Maki said abruptly. "They were with me when I found the body, and the body discovery announcement only plays when 3 or more innocents see the body. That leaves Momota and Gokuhara."
Kaede faltered, seeing the implications of that logic. Both Kaito and Gonta were big softies, and were definitely NOT the type to randomly commit murder.
"Gonta would never kill anyone! Murder is ungentlemanly!" Gonta argued.
"Neither would I!" Kaito argued.
Shuichi nodded. "That theory seems a bit too far-fetched. I'm going to have to look for a few more clues. Maki, can you ask around for alibis? Kirumi can help you, since you two are definitely innocent. Kiyo, can you help me with the cards, and see if there's any anthropological significance? Kaede, I need your help figuring a way that the body could have moved from its primary to here."
The three nodded and went their separate ways; Maki and Kirumi ushered everyone outside so as to not disturb the crime scene, and Kiyo crouched closer to the body, so Kaede did the same. As she did so, she took a glance at Shuichi. He seemed a tad more confident when Kaede had first met him, more sure of himself and determined. Perhaps it was because his life was on the line here, as was everyone else's.
"Well, this seems like a standard 52 deck of cards," Korekiyo picked one up and carefully removed the blood. "I think the playing card with the most importance is <em>that</em> one." he pointed at Miu's bloodied neck. "The last time I checked, you shouldn't be able to slash someone's neck with a card like this. Western playing cards are made of rectangular layers of paper or thin cardboard pasted together to form a flat, semirigid material, after all,"
"Good point," Shuichi carefully placed his hand and pulled the card out, wincing at the horrible clinking sound it made, before passing it to Kiyo.
"This is...a joker," he said, his eyes widening. "Well, this most certainly was planned. There are only 2 jokers in a standard deck after all. The other one is..." he groped through the pile of cards, before taking one that was right next to the clean kitchen knife close to Miu's hand. "Here."
As soon as Kaede heard the word <em>Joker</em>, an image of Kokichi smiling came up in her mind, and judging from the other two's expressions, it seemed like they were thinking the same.
"Kokichi and Miu were never <em>best</em> chums." Shuichi muttered. "They despised each other. So, <em>hypothetically speaking</em>, if there was an argument at night..."
"Kokichi is pretty intelligent, even though he fools around all the time," Kiyo added. "So it would be a peace of cake for him to move the body in under 1 hour 14 minutes, the time between the time of death and the body discovery. "
"But that still leaves the problem of the fatal stabbing," Kaede argued. "If Himiko is too short, so is Kokichi."
"There has to be another way..." Shuichi muttered. "What about the knife then?"
"It was probably taken from the kitchen, " Kiyo offered. "By the likes of it, it was what caused all of these deep stab wounds on her arms and legs, but..."
He turned the card over. "Ah,"
"What?" Shuichi looked at the card. "It-it's soldered! That's how it was used as the murder weapon. But how could the killer have soldered it...?"
Solder...you don't get that at every place possible, except...Kaede knew one place where there <em>had</em> to be a solder machine. She had seen it just the day before.
She sprinted out of the dining hall, pushing the crowd outside, and rushed down the hallway, to the Ultimate Inventor's lab, before pushing the heavy lab door open.
The inside was a mess, even more so than yesterday. The chairs were overturned. The floor was splattered with blood. And there, in the middle of it all, was a solder machine, placed next to an empty box of playing cards.
"I've found the primary," she muttered to no one in particular.
