All rights reserved to Tsubako and Comico.
To read the original novel:
This is NOT an official English translation.
Translated by Sayuri (Flower Moon Translations)
Chapter 7: The Method to Skillfully Kill Him -2- (The Incident That Occurred)
* * *
While maintaining a reasonable distance, Ryouta was cunningly tailing Hasegawa.
While listening to music through his headphones, he tapped his thighs according to the rhythm. He did not realize the fact that he was being followed.
As he left the university, he rode the bus and the train and walked towards the direction of a residential area. Could he perhaps have rented an apartment nearby? Or perhaps he was meeting up with someone?
While Ryouta checked and recorded the address on his smartphone’s GPS, he kept on following him. The functions of the recent GPS has quite considerably improved. It was possible to punctually determine the time you’ll reach the destination you’re headed for.
After following Hasegawa for around 10 minutes, he entered a seemingly old apartment house. Taking out his key, he opened the door. His room was on the first floor and the second room from the back. Room 102.
Ryouta quickly checked the address then surveyed the apartment. It was quite an old and run down apartment built from wood. The student may actually be single. He couldn’t see two people living in a building like that.
At hearing the sound of footsteps, Ryouta made his way around the back of the apartment. Luckily, there was a small garden there. He crouched down an area where he could see the window that belonged to Room 102.
He couldn’t hear anything from the room. Ryouta moved a little bit closer and it was at that moment.
BANG.
A loud sound could be heard coming from the room. It was just one time. He could hear something being thrown countless times.
Ryouta wondered what it was so he got close and peeked at the window. When he did so, this time a loud sound came from the entryway.
It was a sound of the door being opened with force. Then followed by the sound of running footsteps.
Someone had run away, hurriedly and vigorously.
Ryouta timidly looked inside the room from the window.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”
Hasegawa was lying on the floor, face down. From his head, a dark red liquid was flowing. His blonde hair was soaked in red and the floor was colored in dark red. Even on one side of the wall red was scattered about.
Ryouta rushed back to the entrance of the apartment room. He surveyed his surroundings. Someone had hurriedly gone outside. It wasn’t necessary to think it through. Somebody had beaten up Hasegawa then ran away. The person may even be nearby. But around the apartment, he couldn’t see anyone anywhere.
With shaking hands, he opened the door of Room 102. He slowly crept inside.
“Ha, Hasegawkun?”
There was no reply.
“Hasegawkun…? My feet are muddy but, sorry to intrude okay…?”
In the middle of the room was the lying figure of the fallen Hasegawa and broken into two parts was a guitar.
The guitar was soaked in red and lay above a pool of blood. The deep red liquid soaked inside the Tatami mats. On the wall, a bloodstain and a spray of blood stained the wall. Inside the room, a whiff of a woman’s perfume and a thick stench of blood hung in the air.
If we removed the irregular details that just happened, it would transform into a typical room for a guy that lives alone.
“…HASEGAWKUN!“
Ryouta grabbed Hasegawa’s shoulders and called out to him. As he helped Hasegawa up, Hasegawa’s lips shook. It seems that he only has a small amount of consciousness left.
“Thank God! I’ll immediately call for an ambulance!”
“……it………”
“Eh, what? What’s wrong?”
“Su…ddenly, got… hit….”
Hasegawa’s lips moved as he said something. Even though Ryouta thought it was hopeless, he couldn’t help but ask.
“W, who did? Who did you get beaten from?!
“……gui……”
“Gui? What’s that? Who is it about?!”
“…gui, guitar…”
“Guitar? You got hit by a guitar?! Hasegawkun, hold on!”
Ryouta frantically yelled. But that became Hasegawa’s last words. He finished his short life in the arms of Ryouta who’s energy had drained.
* * *
“It turned out to become something unexpected, huh.”
“Yeah……”
The current time was night time. Amano and Ryouta were near the police station smoking cigarettes.
The long inquiry by the police on Ryouta, the first person who found the body, had finally ended. Amano had come to meet Ryouta. Ryouta’s parents came to meet him too but because they wanted to talk alone just the two of them, they gave them some space.
“Has your shock cleared up?”
Ryouta nodded with no energy. The color of his face was pale. The usual superficial look of his wasn’t there.
“Well, somehow. No, it’s that. It’s to the degree that I can remember the feeling of dread the moment I saw the dead body.”
“Anyone would, after all. Even I would.”
Being told that by Amano from the Medical Department, Ryouta felt a little relieved.
“Did you tell them that you were following Hasegawa?”
“No. I just told them that I had planned to go to his house and hang out.”
“Is that so. Maybe we should tell the police about Kishino.”
He couldn’t comprehend the detailed cause of death. But, based on the facts that there was a person in the room, the sound of hitting, the blood-stained guitar, and the bleeding from the head, the possibility that someone ambushed Hasegawa and beat him to death was high.
“Hasegawkun muttered, ‘Guitar’, in his last moments.”
“Guitar……? Are you certain he said that?”
“Yeah, probably. Maybe he wanted to convey to me that he was hit by a guitar.”
“Well, that could be so.”
While Amano simply answered, he was checking his phones a few times. Ryouta saw that and asked him.
“Were you able to contact Kishino-san?”
“Nope, in the first place, I didn’t ask for her contact address. I contacted the university and received her contact information but, the call isn’t connecting. We may have taken too long.”
As Amano said that, he steadily walked back to the police station.
“Yuuji? Where are you going?”
“I’ll tell the police about Kishino. The current suspect and most suspicious person here now is her. Let’s give the forensic investigation a solution. You can go back home already.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Amano went inside the police station and give his testimony on Kishino.
That she had an intimate relationship with Hasegawa, that she had a grudge, that he couldn’t get in touch with Kishino, and he requested that Kishino gets investigated.
Then, around the same time, Kishino’s corpse was found.
* * *
(T/N It was a considerably short chapter so I managed to translate it within today too! But WHAT IN THE WORLD was my reaction after translating the last sentence. I was hoping on the Kishino being the killer. But that’d be too obvious huh? There are literally five more chapters to go!!!)