"Alright, here's what happened..."
Faced with Kotomi Izumi's question, Saori Funamoto readily agreed to explain everything. She was a clever person and knew how to seize every opportunity and advantage she had to firmly latch onto Kotomi.
"It started when the hotel front desk received a complaint from Room 109, saying that noise coming from the neighboring Room 108 was disturbing their rest.
"After apologizing, the front desk staff immediately went to the staff lounge to get the master key and called a colleague to go with them to Room 108. Their plan was to knock on the door and ask the guest to keep the noise down.
"However, on their way to Room 108, both staff members began to feel that something wasn't quite right. When Harugamo Inn was first built, great care had been taken with soundproofing between rooms. Logically speaking, even if Room 108 had been making a lot of noise, Room 109 shouldn't have been able to hear it.
"When they arrived at the door of Room 108, they knocked several times and rang the doorbell for a few minutes, but there was no response from inside. With no other choice, they used the master key to force the door open.
"When those two staff members were describing the situation to the police earlier, I was allowed to listen in since I'm one of the managers of Harugamo Inn. According to them, the moment the door was opened, the entire room was pitch black."
"Pitch black?"
"Yeah. And that made it even stranger. Because from the light in the hallway shining into the room, they could see that the room key card was inserted in the power slot. Also, from the time Room 109 made the complaint to when the staff arrived at Room 108 in the west corridor, it hadn't even been ten minutes. There's no way the guest in Room 108 could have made all that noise and then gone to sleep in such a short time.
"So the two staff members turned on the lights. After calling out to the guest a few more times from the doorway and still getting no response, they reluctantly stepped inside. But as soon as they reached the corner, they felt like they had stepped on something. Looking down, they realized it was blood—already darkened.
"The more timid staff member froze on the spot, while the braver one forced himself to look further inside...
"What they saw was like a scene straight out of hell. A middle-aged man lay on the bed with his eyes wide open, the sheets beneath him soaked in blood.
"A woman had hanged herself with a rope. A bloodstained knife had fallen near her feet. Perhaps she regretted choosing to hang herself at the last moment and tried to free herself, but the rope only tightened further. The expression on her face had become twisted and horrifying.
"And there was a little girl. Her body lay on the floor, and the carpet beneath her had been almost completely soaked through with her blood."
Hearing Saori Funamoto's blunt description, Kotomi Izumi could already picture the gruesome scene in her mind. She shuddered involuntarily. She had never expected that such a bloody tragedy would occur at Harugamo Inn, where she had been staying these past few days.
"I remember there are surveillance cameras in the hallway. Did they capture the suspect or the killer? Wait... you just said the woman in Room 108 regretted hanging herself? What do you mean? Was it suicide?"
Kotomi forced herself to remain calm as she spoke, but she had already picked up on something unusual.
Although the serial murders involving Iroha Isshiki and Kozukashi still made her uneasy when she thought about them, the experience had given Kotomi a great deal of composure. Otherwise, her voice wouldn't have sounded as steady as it did now.
She had initially wanted to ask whether the killer or suspect had been caught on camera. If there was footage, she could simply entrust the matter to Hidari Okumuro. After all, he was no longer an assistant inspector at the Metropolitan Police Department but now worked as a private detective. With Kotomi's allowance, hiring a private detective would be effortless.
Even if there was no footage, she could still hire him. But no matter how she looked at it, having surveillance footage would make things much easier.
However, Saori's next answer shocked Kotomi even more, filling her with complicated emotions.
"The killer or suspect? The cameras didn't capture anything. Not because they conveniently malfunctioned—but because there was no need. The killer is already dead."
"What? The killer is dead too? Where?"
"Just as you guessed, Miss Izumi—the woman who hanged herself committed suicide. She was the middle-aged man's wife and the little girl's mother. She was also the one who killed both her husband and her daughter."
"What—!"
Kotomi nearly cried out in shock but managed to stop herself just in time. If she accidentally shouted again, she had no idea what excuse she would come up with for Yukino and Yui.
Quickly steadying her emotions, she lowered her voice and asked:
"Saori, you're not joking with me, right?"
"Of course not! Even though I smoke, drink, stay up late, and love clubbing, if it's something you want to know, Miss Izumi, I'll tell you everything I know. Not a single word of it is false!" Saori said solemnly.
Although her words sounded somewhat unreliable on the surface, once Kotomi realized that Saori was actually an ambitious young lady deliberately pretending to be frivolous, her statement carried a surprising degree of credibility.
Kotomi quickly organized the information in her mind and accepted it faster than expected. After all, she had already seen an example like Iroha Isshiki. After the initial shock, it no longer felt entirely unbelievable.
"It really is shocking... For a wife and a mother to personally kill her husband and daughter, then hang herself afterward. Now the motive behind the killings has become a mystery."
"Exactly. Everyone's dead. Even if we wanted to investigate the motive, it would be extremely difficult.
The forensic examiner's preliminary conclusion is that after killing her husband with a knife, the woman turned off all the lights in the room and hid in the darkness, waiting for her daughter to return.
When the daughter came back and found the room dark, she couldn't reach the light switch by the door because she was too short. So she called out for her parents while walking further inside. As she passed the corner, the woman—hidden in the dark—rushed out with a knife and stabbed her repeatedly from behind until the blade pierced through the little girl's abdomen.
After killing both her husband and daughter with her own hands, she took out a rope she had prepared beforehand, stood on a chair, and hanged herself.
But since the killer is already dead, the police probably won't spend too much time investigating the motive. Even though there are three victims, it feels like the case will be closed by the end of next month at the latest."
At this point, Saori let out a regretful sigh:
"What a pity. I took a glance at the three bodies in the room just now. That little girl with twin ponytails looked like she was only in kindergarten. At such a young age, and she had to run into something like this... That woman was worse than a beast.
"Sigh... The capsule toy of Cream Bun Kid that she was clutching tightly in her hand was also stained red with blood. I remember it came from the Anpanman-themed capsule machine in the east corridor on the first floor.
"I think she must have gotten the character she liked from the machine and happily returned to the room, wanting to share her joy with her parents. But no matter what, she could never have imagined that what awaited her wasn't her parents' warmth and love, but her father's corpse... and the blade in her mother's hand."
Twin ponytails?!
A Cream Bun Kid capsule toy?!
These two details that Saori mentioned casually struck Kotomi Izumi like a thunderclap in her mind.
Twin ponytails, holding a Cream Bun Kid capsule toy... Putting those two together—wasn't that Tomoe?!
—Tomoe... is dead?!
The thought surfaced instantly in Kotomi's mind. She wanted to force herself not to believe it, to think that maybe it was just a coincidence.
Because once she believed it, it would mean Tomoe was truly dead.
The most prominent emotion in Kotomi's heart wasn't disbelief or fear, but sadness. That was because she had already vaguely sensed something off about Tomoe earlier.
That same sense of unease wasn't only present in Tomoe—it was also present in Yuki.
It was just that Yui and Yukino had been beside her earlier, and Kotomi hadn't known how to bring it up at the time, so she never asked Yuki or Tomoe.
Now, after hearing Saori's words, she felt there was no need to ask anymore.
She had already figured it out.
The Yuki and Tomoe she saw earlier weren't human.
They were ghosts.
From the very first time she met Yuki, Kotomi had felt a strange sense of dissonance from her.
That small figure standing among the crowd didn't feel like a child among people. Instead, it felt more like a pitiful child who should have moved on to another world, but for some reason remained here—wandering alone, drifting aimlessly, unseen and unheard by anyone.
No wonder when I first spoke to Yuki, she reacted so excitedly... because I'm one of the few who can see her. But Yui and Yukino can see her too... does that mean the three of us all have spiritual sight?
Kotomi thought to herself. She had just understood one thing, yet another question had immediately arisen.
She now understood why there was something strange about Yuki and Tomoe—because they were ghosts. To be precise, Yuki had already become a ghost long ago, while Tomoe had only just become one tonight.
But what puzzled her was why she, Yukino, and Yui could all see them.
Normally, when someone realizes they've seen a ghost, their first reaction would be fear, terror, or disbelief.
But when Kotomi realized she had just seen ghosts, she didn't feel much fear or denial. Instead, she found herself thinking:
It's not strange that I can see ghosts—but why can Yui and Yukino see them too?
This wasn't because Kotomi was particularly brave or had an unusual way of thinking. Rather, in a sense, she had already grown somewhat accustomed to the idea of ghosts.
Previously, Kazumi would often appear out of nowhere like a ghost. After being startled a few times, Kotomi had gotten used to it. So even if other spirits or ghosts appeared in front of her, she wouldn't be particularly afraid.
Moreover, Kotomi had always believed that ghosts existed in this world, just as she believed there might be aliens in the universe. So when she realized she had seen ghosts, she didn't stubbornly deny their existence.
"Miss Izumi? Miss Izumi? Miss Izumi?"
Hearing Saori calling her, Kotomi gradually snapped back to her senses and said,
"Ah, sorry. I'm at the station right now—must've been a bad signal just now. By the way, you've got quite the nerve. With three gruesomely dead bodies, most people would avoid it at all costs, yet you actually dared to sneak a look?"
"Hahaha, it's not that I'm not scared. I just think that no matter how glamorous a person is in life, after death they're just a corpse. The only difference is whether the corpse looks peaceful or horrifying. Thinking about it that way, there's nothing particularly scary about it," Saori said casually.
"That mindset doesn't sound like something a spoiled rich kid would come up with," Kotomi remarked meaningfully.
"Hehehe, it's not a big deal. Sometimes I have no choice but to act like a spoiled brat. If I didn't, I might not even be alive right now..."
At that point, Saori deliberately cut herself off and then said with a cheerful laugh,
"Miss Izumi, the police are calling me in for questioning again. When I go to Chiba next time, if you're interested, we can talk more in detail. I won't disturb you any longer."
"Alright. But since the police are questioning people at Harugamo Inn right now, do Yui, Yukino, and I need to go back? After all, the time the murder was discovered isn't far from when the three of us left. To put it bluntly, it wouldn't be strange if we were treated as suspects."
Kotomi said it half-jokingly.
"Please rest assured, Miss Izumi. When the police questioned me earlier, I already left out the fact that you and your two friends had just left. Since the culprit has already been identified, bringing up that you left tonight would only cause unnecessary trouble for you."
"Thanks~"
Kotomi was very satisfied with Saori's handling of this matter, further confirming that Saori was indeed a smart person.
With such a mindset, there was no way Saori had no ambitions for the position of head of the Funamoto family. The idea that she was willingly playing the role of a wasteful rich kid just to serve as a foil to her talented older sister? No one would believe that.
After hanging up the phone, Kotomi quickened her pace to catch up with Yui and Yukino.
"You were on the phone for quite a while just now, and your emotions seemed unstable," Yukino said calmly.
"Well, of course I was unstable. Being told I missed out on an all-you-can-eat A5 wagyu barbecue is basically like going to Burger King and having the staff tell you they've run out of cheese and pickles," Kotomi shrugged helplessly.
After learning about Tomoe and her parents' deaths, Kotomi had briefly considered whether to tell Yui and Yukino.
After thinking it through, she decided not to.
She could accept it so quickly because she had personally experienced a serial murder case before and had always believed in the existence of ghosts.
If Yui and Yukino learned that the Yuki and Tomoe they had just seen were not living people but ghosts, their minds would likely be thrown into confusion for a long time.
So, not telling them was the best choice.
At the very least, this way, Yuki and Tomoe would remain in their memories not as frightening ghosts, but as two cute little girls they happened to meet while traveling in Kyoto.
However, in Kotomi's heart, even knowing that Yuki and Tomoe were ghosts didn't stop her from thinking of them as two adorable—and pitiful—little girls.
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