Chapter 86: The Detective

“Out of the way, I’m a detective—shit.” Matasaburō Watanabe entered the scene, brows narrowed. He came minutes after the scene had been discovered, minutes after everybody had left to escape from the stench of blood and death.

Kazi stood beside the bathroom, pretending to be a guard alongside Noor. Everybody agreed that if there was a killer that there was a chance they would try and mess up the crime scene. They decided the guards through a game of rock-paper-scissors. Pure chance so that the killer couldn’t take charge. Noor’s nostrils flared in annoyance. She won, but at what cost, she said.

“Can I go in?” Matasaburō asked. “I need to conduct an autopsy.”

“No need. This guy already did it,” Noor said, jabbing a thumb at Kazi. “Something about rigorous magic and whatever?”

“The body is cold but it’s only stiff in the face,” Kazi elaborated. “So approximately two hours have gone by since death. You can double-check.”

“Time since your inspection?”

“Five minutes. Nobody has touched it, except me.”

“Where did you make primary contact? Did it leave fingerprints?”

“The wrist. I checked his pulse so no fingerprints.”

“Anything else?”

There was. Hidden on the wall behind the wrist were words written in red fine-print, too perfect for an ordinary person:

Death is nice – AT

He didn’t mention it. However, he knew the detective understood his eyes and the silent meaning of, “You should see for yourself.”

“Understood.” With that said, Matasaburō opened and introduced the train to death once again. Kazi and Noor hovered over his shoulder, watching his every move, from when he put on his gloves to him taking out the knife.

“H-hey, guards! Hello!” Dariush, an Arabic man that had been eying the situation, ran up to them. “Don’t defile the body—”

“Nothing will happen if we just let it be,” Matasaburō said without looking back, his focus entirely on the bloodied steel weapon. “Look at this, it’s a kitchen knife. The same type you’d find in the train kitchen. Evidence leading to the killer.”

Dariush shook his head. “That’s not the point. You ripped it from him like it was some toy. Brother, have some courtesy!”

The back compartment door slid open. Kazi’s expression tightened. He was here. It was Nash.

“Where is he?” Nash’s tone was sharp and steady. Nobody answered him. They merely looked to the bathroom towards the other end of the compartment. Nash didn’t visibly react. “Can I see him?”

“Matasaburō is a detective. He’s checking the body,” Kazi said.

“Was it you?”

“Huh?”

Nash was looking at him. The green in his blue were striking as they swelled with silent rage.

“No, it wasn’t me.”

“Motive,” Nash said. “Nobody else but you had a motive. I helped you before, you said you would reward me, and this is how I get repaid? Your friend William beats the shit of my team and now you kill him?”

Nash was deathly steady. He didn’t raise his voice by a single decibel.

“The body is approximately two or three hours old,” said Matasaburō, standing up. “Tell me, Kazi, do you have an alibi? Does his accusation hold weight?”

All eyes were on him. All eyes were suddenly suspicious. It was so ridiculous that Kazi was tempted to laugh.

“Three hours ago, I was in the fourth high-class compartment playing Go Fish with Paul, Ksenia, Sun-young, William, and Hugo. You weren’t playing but you were at the table behind us. All of them can corroborate my presence.”

“You seem to have kept track of the time quite well,” Matasaburō pointed out. “Too well. There is no clock here, is there? So how can you say for certain it was three hours?”

“I can’t,” Kazi admitted. “It’s a guess based on my internal clock. I’m never wrong though.”

“Is that right?”

“Now come on.” William came in between them. “Do you really think this dude killed Paul?”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Nash replied. “A kid like you wouldn’t understand though. Oh, wait. You’re the little shit that beat Tony up, aren’t you? What, did you come to finish the job?”

William glared at him. “Excuse me?”

Suspicion brew. Matasaburō’s questions weren’t questions at all. He was interrogating him. He suspected him.

Sitting on Kazi’s shoulder was Danzaburou. The red tanuki chuckled and called out, “Haruuuukiii~!”

Ten seconds later, a white tanuki came running through the compartment. “Yes, sir! I’m here, I’m here!”

“Approximately three hours ago, you were giving food, right? Tell me, how long did he talk to you?”

“H-huh?” The white tanuki looked at Kazi and tilted his head. “Oh yeah, he talked a lot. I’d say he held me up for at least half an hour.”

“Problem solved! Kazi is innocent!”

Detective Watanabe frowned. “Your unreliable testimony doesn’t—”

“Everybody here is a suspect,” Danzaburou said, smirking. “Everybody, even you, detective. So that means one person has to be innocent. Either everybody is investigating, one person is investigating, or nobody is investigating. This is a game, my friend. Either you catch the killer or you don’t.”

“A game?” Matasaburō repeated. “This is a game for you?”

“It is. Very much so.” Danzaburou stood tall on Kazi’s shoulder and announced to everyone, “Do you hear me!? This is a game! All of you must find the killer! If your deductions are incorrect, then too bad! The killer escapes and he takes all the rewards with him!”

“Rewards? What rewards? This is the first I’m hearing about any rewards,” Noor said.

“Yeah, nobody said anything about rewards,” Dariush added. “This is—”

Other players also started to complain. The death, the so-called rewards, the lax nature of the tanuki, nothing was making sense.

Flashing with a burst of rage, Nash grabbed Kazi by the collar and slowly said, “Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“EVERYBODY SHUT UP!”

The scream was desperate and cracked half way through. Panting, Noor’s friend in the white hijab, Lala, blushed and stammered, “We should calm down.”

“Lala,” Noor called out, irritated. “Don’t ever do that again.”

The woman covered her mouth. “S-sorry…”

Kazi wasn’t too concerned with the burst. He stared at Nash, who hadn’t released him yet. Eventually, everyone noticed and watched. Watched to see what Nash would do or what Kazi would say.

“Fine. We investigate,” Nash declared. “If you’re innocent, you’re innocent. If you’re not…” he didn’t complete his sentence, turning towards the bathroom to see his friend again.

Kazi couldn’t see his full expression. Nobody could.

“Tick-tock,” said Danzaburou, leaping off his shoulder and onto a table. “Investigate, investigate, investigate. The train will continue moving to its last stop. I will be at the front if you have questions.”

Danzaburou ran off with Haruka following behind. Left alone, the players turned quiet.

’Open main objective,’ Kazi commanded in his head.

[ Gate 8 : Nisekisha

Main Objective: A player has been murdered! Figure out who the killer is before you arrive at Sapporo Station!

Prize Pool: 66,00,000 PP

SPECIAL OBJECTIVE: ?

SPECIAL PRIZE POOL: ? ]

’Look at the Prize Points: sixty-six million! That would only be possible if…’

Kazi recalled every face and body on the train. Not all of them were here, with one being dead and the other missing, but in total there were twenty-two players onboard. ’Sixty-six million divided by three hundred thousand, the payment to enter, equals twenty-two. So that’s how it is. This was ALWAYS intended to be the main objective.’

“This isn’t a ghost train,” Kazi said, “it’s a Thriller on the Express. A murder mystery on a train.”

’Danzaburou called it a game. There’s a chance he might know the murderer; or rather, that he assigned it.’

“It doesn’t matter what this is,” Detective Watanabe said. “Whether this is a game, an objective, or a trial, somebody has died, and it’s up to us to figure it out.” He proceeded to walk away.

“Where is he going?” William asked.

Kazi didn’t answer him. Instead, he caught up to the detective, staying a step behind him, and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”

Matasaburō didn’t look back. “Why?”

“I was a local detective back home. Nothing official but I often helped out where the police couldn’t.” Despite the situation, a smile spread across his face. “Plus, you’re a real detective. I really want to see how you do things.”

“You’re a suspect, just like anyone else. But, as the raccoon correctly pointed out, so am I.”

“Precisely. One person discovering stuff won’t matter. They’d suspect forgery. But two guys? Especially considering the way you interrogated me? We’d make a fine team!”

Matasaburō continued walking, continued opening door after door, and continued thinking. At the entrance to the kitchen, he stopped and turned. “If you’re a detective, do you have any suspects?”

“Instinctively, when I saw the body, I thought of the Teke Teke.”

A brow was raised. “Go on.”

“Did you notice the way Danzaburou tried to get us to suspect each other? Well, what if it’s not a player but a vengeful spirit? This train, it was labelled as Nisekisha, a ghost train. However, even though I said this is more of a murder mystery, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s possible it’s both—it’s a mystery and the killer among us is in actuality a vengeful spirit.”

“You’ve thought this through,” Detective Matasaburō admitted. He pushed his sunglasses up with his ring finger. “Not bad.”

“I have a few theories already and suspects in mind. The Teke Teke urban legend is supposed to be about a school girl. That narrows down gender. On top of that, three-ish hours ago, we stopped at a train station, another piece of the Teke Teke legend. Weird, right?”

Detective Watanabe didn’t reply immediately. He looked Kazi over, squinting. “…you should come with me,” he said, before opening the door.

’D-did I get his approval?’ Kazi asked in his head. Well, if he did, good! That would make convincing everyone that much easier.

Tony was dead and Kazi was one the early suspects. The atmosphere of this Gate was different than any other that came before it. Eyes casted suspicion with every sweep. Human nature came to the forefront and caused friction. It was time to slice through the lies and reach the truth. That was the job of a detective.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep