Playing Detective

Realization, Change, Resolution

Cinnabar found it one day--it was under their desk, and they had no idea how it even got there. Did a student put it there? Is it someone else's? Is it like a parcel and the sender had the wrong person? Needless to say, curiosity got the best of them, even when they had strictly told themself to mind their own business.

It was a book. Or a journal.

First they examined its cover, dragging their fingers over its leather. From the looks of it, it's pretty high quality. There's the word 'Diary' etched into it, and the pages inside seem worn and old. Cinnabar flicked through its pages--and that's another thing about it. The whole book is already full, and there's no more space to write. Literally. All the lines. Filled. With words. Yay.

When the brunette's eyes read the first few words and saw just how many more words there were in the journal, they immediately stopped themself and all of their curiosity was Thanos snapped in an instant. But it wasn't until their eyes laid upon even more words and they realized that all the words and sentences in the journal...

...told the story that had happened so far in the school. Everything, in fact--even the smallest details, like an upperclassman going into a coma after drinking the forbidden juice in the science lab storage room, or another upperclassman who got food poisoning from chugging too much ranch or another who was crestfallen because their best friend left them to go to another school. Everything was wacky and the onslaught of new information brought back their flame of curiosity, just like the quick flick of a lighter.

Cinnabar completely abandoned their studies as they focused on finishing the journal and knowing everything that happened in the school. It was a good thing their teacher was just there for their salary and didn't actually care about the education of their country's youth, so they never really got in trouble. When Cinnabar finished one journal, another came, and to avoid forgetting the really important things that were written in the journal, they jot down notes on a hard cover diary of their own. To avoid it getting lost or stolen, they scribble down their signature, 'Shin'.

And that was how Cinnabar had come to know almost everything that happens at school, despite not caring enough about everyone else before. They never really needed to do any actual perceiving--the magic journal does it all for them. However, come the arrival of more journals, and more information, Cinnabar found that there were some parts in the journal that were... uncanny.

To start, some entries were jumbled up and the dates didn't make sense. Some of them weren't in order. Some of them hadn't happened as of the time they read it but occured in the future. It wasn't a big deal, so the brunette brushed it off. They read the journals as a hobby anyways, despite it taking up most of their time.

It was only when they got to the serious parts of the journal that they realized how big of a deal it was, and how stupidly rich of a history their school has.

--

One of the journals in Cinnabar's possession tells what would happen in the future, and upon reading on a certain catastrophe that would befall their school, the brunette had decided to take action and prevent it from happening. The entry this time around was especially weird--usually the entries would go into full detail on the things that have or haven't happened, but the entry on the catastrophe was vague and Cinnabar doesn't even know who would start it.

All they know is that they have to take a course of action--and considering the fact that they have no idea who it could be, they wrote down a list of suspects. After they did their own digging though, all of the suspects they've named as a hypothesis would later be ruled out of suspicion. There were varying factors as to why they were ruled out--but that doesn't cast Cinnabar's worries aside, despite the list of suspects being narrowed even if by just a little.