---

---

Well, just as I expected, and frankly, it's almost comical. No need to lament whatsoever.
I figured as much, but I still showed up in the dining room, trying my best to be considerate so as not to frighten the others. In my case, if I wasn't seen for half a day, people might suspect I was lying low to commit murder rather than just being dead somewhere.

Just like last night, Natane-san wedged her face between Fushimi and me, apologizing, "It's the master's orders, sooo, well, given our positions and all, y'know... I'm very sorry." She even served us water.
For our part, under the pretext of at least drinking the water we were offered, we had no choice but to indulge in a little game of "let's passive-aggressively pollute the room's atmosphere." Fushimi seemed to be enduring the urge for her empty stomach to dissolve into tears, biting her lip as if suppressing a stomachache as she sat rigidly in her seat. Maybe she was already worrying about how we'd be treated from now on.
The immediate concern, I suppose, is tonight's dinner.

"Alright then, let's eat."
With Keiko-san permanently absent from her seat, Kouzou-san took the lead in starting the meal. He'd reported before eating that attempting to break out seemed impossible anywhere, wearing a sullen face, but his mood seemed to soften somewhat now.
The reason *why* the house was renovated into such a fortress remained unexplained, leaving my question hanging, solidified.

Six people picked up their chopsticks. Besides us, there was one other person missing from the table's tableau: Ooe Yuna, the eldest daughter.
I, along with Fushimi who now accompanies me, had gone to call her from her room on the first floor.

"Coming in!"
Skipping the knock, I unlocked and threw open the door.
Yuna was sitting against the wall by the window, knees drawn up. Even faced with sudden visitors, she smiled – the kind of smile you might describe as looking like it could shatter the mirror it faced.
"My, my. What business do you have with me, barging into a lady's private chambers with a post-facto report?"
"Just wanted the residents to understand I'm making myself right at home. This used to be my little sister's and my playroom, you know." Just kidding, though.
"Is that so? How does it feel, having your room and memories NTR'd?"
"Something's welling up under my scalp. Seems like I might work up a good sweat before the meal."
"So, what is it? How many people have been killed this time, hmm? How exciting."
"Sorry to disappoint, but the job market for corpses isn't booming enough for positions to be filled so generously. You're also invited to the midday meal where we toy with the corpses of grains and vegetables. Care to devour them with us?"
"Oh my," she glanced towards the bed, then pressed her thumb into her own abdomen.
"It seems my stomach just hasn't finished... uninstalling last night's meal. That's what my gut is telling me."
"Hmm... I see. Maybe it's time for some expansion and renovation soon, then. Want to eat enough rice balls to make your stomach burst?"
"Well, the family *is* growing, after all."
"If anything, your family's trending towards reduction," I let my true thoughts slip out.

*—How many kids do you want, Papa?*
*—Enough to fill the house, maybe? Haha.*

"Eek, that's just plain gross. Are *you* going to the dining room? You two are forced non-participants, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah. But harmony is the greatest of virtues, you know." Just kidding, though.
I deliberately ignored Fushimi tilting her head at Yuna's remark.

And so, Yuna remained the guardian of her room, and the steam rising at the dining table came from six bowls, plus the stir-fried vegetables, making seven plumes in total.

Touka was the first to pick up some vegetables with her chopsticks and chew. Then, she grimaced.
"This is kinda bland."
"Oh dear...? Ah, I'm so sorry, you're right. I must have spaced out..."
The mother offered polite, bowing apologies to her daughter. In response, the daughter, her face crumbling in a way difficult to describe, was forced into silence towards her mother. Choking on the routine ingrained with compulsion.
"It can't be helped, really. Isn't it crueler to ask someone to cook calmly under these circumstances? Right?"
Kiyoshi-san, in a hoarse voice, excused his wife's blunder, then peeked at Kouzou-san's face, trying to extend the scope of forgiveness to him. Kouzou-san took a bite himself before declaring magnanimously, "It's plenty tasty."
However, he failed to notice the demerit points hidden in the annoyed glance he shot our way immediately afterward. Doesn't seem like we could expect him to be useful in an emergency. Not that we ever did, though.

"I have a report, for what it's worth."
After washing down the contents of his mouth with water, Kouzou-san began. The only person listening with a truly earnest attitude was Kiyoshi-san. The others' attention was clearly skewed towards their food.
"As we knew, calling for help outside gets no response. It's not just that there's little foot traffic; there's practically none. I plan to give it another try after the meal, but..." At that point in his statement, Kiyoshi-san coughed once. The man actually directing the work on-site had no throat irritation, so his lips moved smoothly. "At this point, since the doors won't open, our only option might be to break down a wall or the iron bars to get outside... Though how to actually do that is the difficult part."
Kouzou-san paused his chopsticks and folded his arms. Wrinkles of distress formed on his unreliable-looking face and thinning hair.
"Why don't you just use the handgun?"
Touka suggested, without raising her hand, after drawing the bean sprout she was holding into her mouth with her tongue.
"Oh, then I wanna shoot it!"
Ignoring the intent behind her younger sister's words, the elder sister flaunted her own desire, her facial muscles excessively strained.
"If Big Sis... gets it, she might shoot people."
"Ooh? Touka-chan, are you praising me?"
Touka breezily ignored Akane's question—the meaning of which was hard to discern—deflecting with, "Big Sis, don't leave your carrots."
"Hey, hey," Akane resisted the incoming carrots with her chopsticks, as if justifying her picky eating.
"No, you can't. You have to eat when you can," Touka said, her tone serious in its own way. As if telling her to read the room, she piled up the carrots Akane had been setting aside. Akane puffed out her cheeks with a "Mmph," clearly not convinced in the slightest. She radiated the determination to transfer the carrots to someone else's plate the moment she got a chance. Within the Ooe family, grappling with this situation, it was a relatively human interaction.

Takahiro-san watched this scene, resting his cheek on his hand. He seemed to have finished his meal; his glass and bowl were stacked neatly.
"So, how exactly were you planning to use the handgun?"
The birth mother asked her former daughter, using polite language. After a slight pause from both sides,
"Can't you, like, break the door lock? Shoot it bang bang."
Touka gestured firing a gun with her chopsticks.
The one who answered was the purchaser of the weapon, Kouzou-san.
"I've no idea where on the door to shoot. If we had more bullets, I could just fire randomly, but..."
"You don't have any?" Touka seized on the statement that grounded her own idea.
"We only have the bullets that were loaded in it. Of course, I never intended to fire it."
The latter half came out quickly, Kouzou-san mixing in self-justification.
"We can't destroy a wall with three bullets, and with the iron bars crossing over each other like that, it'd be difficult to secure an opening wide enough for a person to get through. It'd probably be faster to just try and smash them apart with brute force. I'll try again later."
At her father's statement—a surprisingly sensible one, from my perspective—Touka fell silent. However, there was no element of pessimism visible in her. Could a creature lacking the ingrained habit of going outside even feel a sense of crisis from being 'unable to get out'? The thought made me feel as though I'd stumbled upon a question while flipping through an insect encyclopedia.
"Oh, if you do shoot it, let me do it, okay?"
Akane declared her reservation, and at that, the five people excluding Takahiro-san leaned forward, ready to devote themselves to their meal.
After that, they maintained a peaceful atmosphere by ignoring our presence.

The mood at the table felt like it had strengthened, somewhat, towards unity. Perhaps thanks to satisfied appetites.
But there was no way a development leaning towards perfect unity and happy family harmony awaited us from here.
Not from the moment I became involved.
Stepping back one, even two paces from the family council, the outsider could only reflect a lonely, flat smile on the water's surface.

---

I described the room doors as being like prison cells.
Fushimi described the rooms in this mansion as being hotel-like.
Right now, it seems the function of each room leans more towards my description.
Because while they *can* lock you in, locking *yourself* in safely is incredibly difficult. There's no privacy in the washroom either; the only place you can lock from the inside is the toilet.

Anyway, in one of these prison cells, I was burrowed under the blankets on the bed, nursing an empty stomach. I couldn't sleep.
After the slightly late lunch (or rather, midday water-only session for us) ended, Fushimi and I had been sunbathing in Keiko-san's room. That room, due to the lattice configuration, let in the most sunlight, and more importantly, it smelled nice, so we prioritized its comfort. Leaning back against the shelf near the window, legs stretched out like a puppet with cut strings. Like that, sometimes dozing off, sometimes voicing whatever thought came to mind. Fushimi, perhaps fearing letting go of consciousness, didn't blink much or close her eyes often, though.
After the sun went down, we engaged in a staring contest until Fushimi started laughing—whether awkwardly, intentionally, or through tears didn't matter. Around the time we achieved marginal success, Takahiro-san delivered instructions to gather in the dining room, so we followed, sensing the pointlessness of it all.

At the dining table, surrounded by nine people, it was decided by Kouzou-san's discretion to skip dinner and save the food for tomorrow.
Furthermore, it was announced that the door to our room would be locked once we entered after 9 PM. This wasn't out of consideration for us guests' safety in the slightest, but primarily meant to confine us, the suspects. Since it also ensured our physical safety, we accepted without resistance, and contrary to the daytime arrangement, the key was entrusted to Yuna.
Our exchange— "What time shall I set the morning call?" "I leave it entirely up to you, like a chef's choice dessert"—made it seem just like the two of us were accomplices. When I tossed out that joke, everyone took it seriously and looked suspicious, which was a great success. Just kidding, sorry about that.

The others were asked to decide about locking their own doors. How far do you trust the others? And will the person you trust request someone *else* lock their door? Whose hands will the key you entrusted to someone end up in? Domestic discord is colored by such suspicion and paranoia.

There was this exchange.
"This is about what to do with everyone's room keys tonight."
Kouzou-san solemnly presented the topic to us, gathered around the foodless table.
Since Fushimi and I had already been dealt with, we didn't interject. Yuna, who implicitly accepted not locking her own door, maintained a perspective one step removed from the tedious meeting by adjusting the position of her crossed arms and legs.
"Everyone staying in the same room... doesn't seem likely to get much support."
Kouzou-san spoke with an air of just keeping the conversation going for now. True, that would be quite effective in reducing potential victims. But it's not a foolproof way to prevent murder. If the culprit doesn't care about the consequences, they could still kill at least one person. If you fear being that chosen one... perhaps separate rooms, maintaining a distance beyond each other's reach, is the ideal.

Besides, the knife still hasn't been found, it seems.
Basically, we're resigned to the fact that we'll die eventually if time just passes like this, so no matter how we struggle, shaking off the danger to our lives is difficult.
Kouzou-san seemed to understand that, and indeed, during the day, construction-like noises echoed from afar, and Kiyoshi-san's "Pleeease help us" throat-singing voice made for a highly sleep-disturbing experience. Well, the only saving grace was that it wasn't bothering the neighbors—ah, maybe *that* was the real despair.

"So, I have a proposal."
Kouzou-san—who, in my opinion, has established a reputation for seeming reasonably dignified as head of the household as long as he keeps his mouth shut—stuck his neck out again this time to expand his authority.
"Let's gather all the room keys and entrust them to one person. Unless our luck is exceptionally bad, I think this is the safest option."
Kouzou-san scanned the unhealthy complexions around him. What he proposed was a measure based on probability. Rather than trying to suspiciously sound each other out, bet on a one-in-nine chance—a murder prevention tactic that could be implemented with less mental burden.
However, if you entrust the keys to that one person, and *they* turn out to be the murderer. If they are filled with the desire to kill others too. Handing over the keys instantly becomes handing over your life.
"How about it? Not a bad idea, I think."
"Yes, well, I would agree... if the person holding them was Natane, yes."
Kouzou-san's eyes widened at Kiyoshi-san's conditional agreement. The sticking point seemed to be 'if it was Natane.'
"Like hell I'd agree to that."
Immediately after, a voice of dissent rose. It was the sullen-faced Touka. She let out a sigh tinged with slight exasperation, making a show of it.
At this young girl's disrespectful attitude, Kouzou-san, as if lodging a complaint for lese-majesty, peeled back not just his eyes but his words too.
"What reason do you have to reject it so thoughtlessly?"
"If you think about it for a second, you'll get it. I don't want to waste extra brain nutrients for your sake, Dad, so figure out the reason yourself."
The rebellious phase of an adolescent daughter towards parents she feels no obligation to. With no one defending her defiant attitude, nor anyone joining the "Support Kouzou-san Club," the two glared at each other.
Then, just as Kouzou-san was about to let loose his counterargument, pent up with saliva, Touka spoke.
"Anyway, I don't really care about the key. I don't think we're at that stage yet."
"Oh, then me too."
As if ordering the same dish, Akane also publicly displayed her lack of independent decision-making.
Then, she stretched her neck towards her younger sister in the next seat and peered into her face.
"Touka, if you're scared, I can sleep with you, okay?"
"Big Sis, *you're* the one who shouldn't come crying to me in the middle of the night... Seriously, it freaks me out."
Touka easily broke eye contact with Kouzou-san and gave her sister a wry smile.
Casually sidelined, Kouzou-san's frustration mounted beyond mere impatience into outright hatred.

"—Think it over...!"
Kouzou-san slammed his fist on the table, sending a hateful glare towards his daughters.
Not locking the door seems, on the surface, to carry an underlying intention of peaceful activity, like trusting others. But if a murder occurs by the next day, you become a suspect. Furthermore, the more people who *don't* lock their doors, the higher the possibility of murder seems to rise...
Increasing the number of people isolated in their rooms is likely Kouzou-san's true desire.

"I don't need a key either. I'll return to my room once everyone else has confirmed."
As if slipping into a gap in the flow of the conversation, Takahiro-san decided his own arrangement. The puppet whose strings were cut ignored the puppeteer's expression with his acorn-like eyes, his face cool. It looked as if a breeze might blow from somewhere at any moment and rustle even his bangs.
When my eyes met Takahiro-san's, he narrowed his eyes for just an instant. But he immediately averted his gaze towards Yuna.

"Well then, Kiyoshi? What about you, huh?"
Kouzou-san, acting like a drunk picking a fight, vented his frustration from his poor relationship with his daughter—a pathetic sight. Just kidding, though.
"Ah, yes, well, I... if my, my wife says yes, then the key..."
He pleaded with Natane-san with a sideways glance. Kouzou-san, having his gaze averted again, was quite furious.
"Oh, um, that's fine. I'll take good care of Kiyoshi-san's room for him."
Natane-san, prioritizing the safety of her wimpy—I mean, her husband—accepted the offer. I found myself imagining: if Mayu and I were vacationing at this mansion, would I forcibly lock her in the room, or would we spend the night as usual in the same futon?
Ah, Mayu... In winter, it was comforting when she'd cling to me while sleeping together, but in summer, the amount of night sweat would probably increase... My thoughts skipped right past the spring we were enjoying and flew to the next season.

Alright, time to rejoin reality. With that, the nighttime arrangements for eight people were decided. One person remained.
Six of the eight pairs of eyes gathered on that one person. Of the remaining two, Fushimi was looking at me, and Takahiro-san was still looking at Yuna.
"Dad, can *you* entrust your key to anyone else?"
The malicious Touka stuck her chopsticks right into the center of the lacquered box.
Kouzou-san's eyes changed color at the frank sarcasm, his shoulders twitching.
"So you were trying to ensure your own safety without trusting anyone?"
Since he's not her real father, she probably feels free to insult and scorn him as she pleases. Whether such tangled thoughts about family swirled in Touka's mind or not, she said whatever she wanted.
In other words, Kouzou-san had been scheming again to have himself nominated for the role of key-keeper through his earlier brilliant idea (as he prided himself). And now, he'd been dragged into the line of fire.
His pride utterly crushed, Kouzou-san suppressed a yell to avoid further disgrace. If it had been me instead of Touka, he probably wouldn't have restrained his words, would he?
"...No, I... I don't need... a key either."
An inappropriate whitening of the mood for nighttime.

That exposed the distortion of the self-centered family and swallowed the voices of discussion.
In the end, the meeting disbanded vaguely, respecting each individual's wishes regarding the keys. Except for one person, the sense of crisis hadn't yet been fully stoked. After all, Keiko-san's corpse felt distant. There was a subtle distance, making it not much different from a murder victim in a Tuesday night suspense drama viewed through a CRT screen—a drowsy death.
Its effect wasn't fully kicking in. I hope she just gets cremated like this.
Fundamentally, why was Keiko-san murdered? Because this motive is unclear, the fear is blurred. Whether or not it relates to oneself determines the range of possibility for a second murder drawing near.

...Amidst all this, I was now breaking out in a sweat from crisis and anxiety, gritting my teeth.

"...You awake?"
Someone, hiding completely under the blanket and pressing their body right up against my back, asked in a hoarse voice if I was conscious. I considered using the silence of feigned sleep to implicitly demand "Just go to sleep already," but figured if I didn't answer, she might just start crying, and by morning, it could lead to the misunderstanding that *I* had wet the bed from my back, drawing a map of Hokkaido. So, I replied, "I'm awake," turning my eyes towards the ceiling light. Just kidding, though. More likely, it'd be passed down as one of the Ooe family ghost stories.

Anyway, there were two people in the room. Us, meaning Fushimi, was sharing the bed with me. This was currently the cause of my sleeplessness. As expected for April, being wrapped in a blanket next to someone in a sealed room makes the heat build up, preventing comfortable sleep. On top of that, the light was left on, ignoring the electricity bill. Therefore, the fact that I haven't yawned once in over an hour is due to the temperature, and absolutely not because I'm a coward whose heart is pounding imagining what Mayu would think if she found out. The fact that Fushimi's particular weapons are pressed against my back also has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Just kidding, though.

...Pressing a hand over my heart, over the flesh and bone, I thought of Mayu. Humans need water to live, but right now, for *me* to live comfortably, the Mayu component was also indispensable. My reserves were already down to less than dust, the kind that wouldn't amount to a hill unless it piled up. Red warning lights were flashing everywhere.
And then there's Koibi-sensei. My public promise to contact her was unwillingly broken due to a water-play accident with my cell phone that was far too ahead of the season. There's probably no chance she'd sense something amiss from the lapse in regular contact and come to the rescue. My relationship with Sensei counts as a remarkable achievement for someone like me whose relationships never last long, though.

Looking back, Sensei is really the only person I've had continued contact with for nearly eight years. I don't have parents who watched over my growth from birth, or friends I strove together with, and my siblings... every single one of them died early on or shifted their relationship status to 'bully.' Yeah, it's really just Sensei.
That woman, since I declared it myself, won't forcibly involve herself in the situation. If I hadn't made my position clear, she's the type who'd interfere endlessly. But because I know her so well, I don't expect her to come banging on the Ooe family's gate as a champion of justice. Sensei and a bloody incident feels like an ill-fitting combination anyway.

...And then, someone I find even *less* fitting for this situation, Fushimi Yuyu.
She followed me all the way to my room door and refused to leave, seriously saying, "I don't want to go home tonight." Which seriously surprised me, and now we're seriously trying to spend the night in the same bed in the same room. ...Setting aside such cynical interpretations, it was obvious her reason for not wanting to return to her room wasn't lust or a badger game, but fear.
This girl is unbearably terrified by the fact that someone died nearby. So much so that she'd rather share a bed with a guy she barely knows than face the night alone. How refreshingly normal.

"For such a coward, you were sure trying hard to catch a murderer the other day."
I continued addressing my exasperation to the light fixture instead of Fushimi. If my conversation partner is inanimate, Mayu would probably allow it. In fact, the thing clinging to my back might as well be a fluorescent light. Someone, please hypnotize me.
"Because... I hadn't seen anything. That's why... I could move, but..."
Fushimi rubbed her forehead against my back, sweat beading.
"I see..."
So witnessing a raw corpse filled her heart to the brim with fear. To put it in samurai terms: practice and real battle are different, methinks. Not just the murder, but the lockdown must be amplifying her loneliness too.
"But Fushimi, I think you would have had your door locked if you went into another room. Then you'd be safe."
Hearing that, there was the sound of Fushimi's affection and the blanket rustling together.
"There's... no one I can give the key to."
"Hmm, maybe so, but since you're in this room now, it means you entrusted it to Yuna too, technically."
"If I'm with you, it's okay."
"...Makes no sense."
Leaving it at that, I closed my eyelids again.
Alright, time to try my best to sleep.

---

My dreams often tend to lack comfort.
In most cases, my consciousness recognizes "Ah, it's a dream," even as it interacts with the fantasy. This time too, I found myself sending a somewhat detached gaze towards Mayu, who was right in front of me, peeling an apple with her own fingernails. A calm analysis concluded it was likely because my Mayu-component deficiency was starting to eat away at my mind. Normally, I should have been reacting with "Kyaa! Maa-chan Maa-chan Maa-chan Maa-chan chaaaaan!" welcoming her presence ecstatically, shouldn't I?