Memories in Addition

9: What Can You Guarantee?

"So we have two casualties now. And a teacher was involved now, too", Yanyan shoved his face onto his desk. "Just great."

Nadhine looked down and gripped the notebook she had on her hand so hard, it might practically be torn apart. "It's all my fault."

Sachi looked at her as she explained. "If I hadn't left her alone, she might've still be alive."

Yanyan looked at her in sympathy, before turning his head to the back, where a crying Sandy was being comforted by Ysa, who was also sobbing.

"Well, not like we can actually do anything else", Shanell frowned. "All we can do is to make use of what she left for us, you know?"

Bea frowned as well, before nodding. "Yeah. The code Florence wrote seems legit. Maybe it could tell which one of us killed her."

Sachi turned to Joyce, as the reincarnation of an unnamed individual frowned. "I think it would be best to analyze the situation first with everyone else. It would increase the chances of us actually pinpointing the killer. Don't you guys agree?"

Yanyan and Nadhine looked at each other.

"Well, it would be reasonable", Nadhine started--

"Hey, guys!", Yanyan called out to the whole class. "Gather up, if you please!"

Joyce sweatdropped. Shanell sighed. "Astudillo, you're going to be the death of this class."

😅

"S-so far", Hans fumbled with his hands nervously. "This whole thing has a lot of holes in it. The whole room was pointed to a cult-like serial killer setting that doesn't really point to any of us, and all the clearance that we could possibly crack was the code she left behind, and it's probably impossible to know what it means."

The whole class were given a free period, since Ma'am Karla thought that they must have been so traumatized, and they were currently formed in a circle as the teacher left, with Hans in the middle of it all, sitting on a chair. Some of them were sitting on the chairs in the side, while others on the tables or on the floor.

Shanell hummed at Hans' observance considerately. "Maybe you're not looking into it very closely..."

"What do you mean by that?", Joyce frowned, her eyes narrowed at her.

"I mean...", Shanell turned to look at Bea, who suddenly thought that the ground has something interesting on it. "Let's look at the other content of the room, shall we?"

Nadhine and Joyce exchanged looks.

"If you've seen the mannequins", Shanell slowly got up from her place at the floor. "You guys should have noticed that they were hung upside down in each corner, right? Like all the meat in a freezer of a factory, or the pigs set up before being barbecued?"

Ysa and Sandy nodded.

Hans' face dawned up in realization. "S-so, you're saying that the room was probably set up in some sort of meat-feeding scenario?"

"I guess you could say that", Shanell wagged her finger thoughtfully as she walked over to the reincarnation of the apostle Peter and put a supporting hand on his shoulder. "All the paint scattered around might have been caused in a struggle, too. You guys agree?"

The rest of them all nodded.

"But what about the giant lettering on the wall?", Isay pointed out. "The word; BLOODLUST."

As she said that, Joyce noticed Shanell's eyes glimmer with something very wrong, before it disappeared. That made her on edge, to be honest. What...was that?