Chapter Text
Hanano felt giddy as a schoolgirl as she walked down the hallway to Kamimura’s room. Her plan had been going so well that it was hard to keep the pep out of her step—that could wait until after she had successfully pulled off the first murder.
She wasn’t the most interested in the actual crime itself (Kamimura was almost too easy to kill), but the staging would hopefully be fun! And the fact of the matter was that Hanano would get to see her Manami’s corpse soon afterwards, so it would be worth it no matter how garish it ended up being. It would’ve been a little fun to see Kamimura try and figure everything out, but Hanano wanted to give the rest of the sad sacks the runaround for as long as possible before her big monologue, so forensics boy would have to go, which would take care of Hasegawa too. Two birds, one saw!
As Hanano approached Kamimura’s door, she pulled out the key she had printed for herself the previous night. She had tested it after preparing the woodshop for Manami, and it had worked perfectly! Considering how she hadn’t been able to pick any of the locks in the school, Hanano had been worried that it wouldn’t unlock without the specific key the rabbit had given them. Thankfully luck was on her side. This whole thing was fate, after all. Every single domino had kept falling into line for her.
She slid it into the lock and opened the door while humming under her breath. Youhei really was a talented composer. Shame he had such prominent commitment issues. The pleasant scent of Kamimura’s almost sterile room filled her nose as she walked in. He likely would have gone for his bed since flunitrazepam kicks in pretty quickly after ingestion and he’d have—
Hm. There was a problem. Kamimura wasn’t in his room.
The rooms were small, and even though Kamimura was too, there weren’t any hiding places someone lacking motor functions could have accessed. He wasn’t in the bathroom either. That meant that Kamimura had passed out somewhere else. Likely in front of other people. He was probably in the medbay with Manami by this point.
Hanano couldn’t help the wave of anger that passed over her, replacing the faint smile she had with a severe grimace. What was she going to do? She was still carrying the sedative on her, and Hasegawa was sure to immediately figure out that he had been poisoned with something from the chemistry lab, if he hadn’t already clocked that it was rohypnol. Hanano had only used a tiny amount and there hadn’t been a seal on it, so maybe she could put it back before Hasegawa confirmed it was missing? There would be no way to connect it back to her in that case, as her bandages would have prevented her from leaving any evidence.
To the chem lab, then, Hanano thought. She let out a long-suffering sigh before sneaking back out of Kamimura’s room. If she couldn’t return the drug to its original location, she would need to quickly figure out a plan B to dump it somewhere that wouldn’t immediately incriminate her. Without the trial investigation clock running, the rest of the group would have all the time in the world to figure out who had taken it, and having it in one of her pockets was a pretty obvious giveaway.
More importantly than that, though, was that her plan to lead her archnemesis to the woodshop could be completely dashed at this point! It had relied on her butchering Kamimura in the art supply room, but she couldn’t exactly do that when she didn’t even know where he was. Why couldn’t he have just passed out in his room like she planned! It was really quite rude of him.
As she approached the chemistry lab, Hanano reached into one of the many inner pockets of her overcoat for the small vial. It had originally only had the standard two when she had stolen it, but the incredibly skilled and gifted phantom thief had sewn in about ten more hidden ones on the inside.
“Shit, shit, shit. It’s not here. Why isn’t it here?” Was that Hasegawa swearing? It seemed plan B was quickly becoming plan A.
Hanano poked her head in the doorway. Hasegawa was rummaging through the chemical cabinet like it was his own life on the line. He quickly read each label before haphazardly slamming the bottle down on what remaining counter space wasn’t littered with other chemicals. It was kind of funny how freaked out he was, though that was probably to be expected considering he had likely run out of meds at this point and his little boyfriend had been drugged. That would bring most people’s psychological problems to the forefront.
Hasegawa slammed the cabinet door shut and hurriedly turned to the entrance. He made contact with Hanano for a split second before looking down at the floor. Still can’t look her in the eyes, huh! Well, eye holes. He couldn’t see her behind the mask. Hanano was a bit disappointed in him; she had seen a wild glint in his wide gaze that was exciting. She hadn’t had enough time to tell if the look was that of cornered prey or a predator beginning its hunt. How fun!
His brow was furrowed as he spoke: “Okazaki. What are you doing here?”
“Hm? Is there something wrong, Hasegawa? You seem… tense.” Hanano stepped fully into the entrance, blocking it.
“Nothing,” Hasegawa said as he started walking towards her. “It’s nothing.”
“I’m your therapist, aren’t I? You can trust me with whatever’s bothering you.”
“Y-you aren’t my therapist. Can you tell me why you’re here?” He couldn’t go any farther unless he pushed her out of the way. Hanano was starting to think that he might. She hadn’t expected this! Hasegawa had gotten a tad snippy with her in their therapy sessions, but had otherwise generally acted like his usual pathetic-kicked-puppy self. She wanted to push his buttons, see if that dog could bite.
“Well, since you’ve asked so politely, a couple days ago, Toshi”—Hasegawa’s face twisted further. Bingo! Hanano kept her voice even as she continued—“was in here while Nishi and I were doing rounds. He was looking at some slides he had found on one of the microscopes. He was quite rude about it, actually, and wouldn’t let me look at them. I came back to see if they were still here.”
“He,” Hasegawa paused and took a deep breath before finally looking at her properly. Was he already suspecting her? Smart boy! He should know that he didn’t really have any strong evidence to point to, though. “Okazaki, can you move? I’m trying to leave.”
“Without cleaning up that mess you made?” Hanano tilted her head to the side innocently. “Kamimura won’t like that.”
“I, I’ll get it later. Now, excuse me, Okazaki.”
They stared at each other before Hanano brushed past him into the chemistry lab proper. There were more important things than playing with Hasegawa, even if he was being fun for once in his boring life. Hanano also needed to keep in mind that she couldn’t be too suspicious.
“Bye-bye,” she said, walking towards the microscopes. Hanano felt a glare being shot her way as Hasegawa stormed off, likely back to the medbay or wherever Kamimura had been put up. As always, Hanano was grateful to her mask for obscuring the smirk on her face.
She needed to figure out what she was going to do now. Her original plan had her just keep it on her person, but that plan did not include Hasegawa or Kamimura being able to investigate. They’d been the only people who would’ve known that they had rohypnol in the first place, and without them she could have had control over the flow of information regarding it. Since they were unfortunately still involved, she felt like something needed to be done with the vial.
There was no way she could just put the flunitrazepam back in the chem lab at this point. If it reappeared after Hasegawa saw her there, she may as well admit that she poisoned Kamimura to his face and suffer his dorky-ass wrath. What were her other choices? Dropping it in some random room ran the risk of her being seen, which would create the same issue of leaving it in the chem lab.
…Would it be too crazy to leave it back in Kamimura’s room? Considering the room-temperature IQ of most of the people she was stuck with, maybe they’d all just be stupid enough to think he’d done it to himself. Not like he didn’t have a track record. But even these idiots would figure out that he didn’t have access to his room last night, though, so that plan wouldn’t work either. Hanano didn't want to leave the second floor until she had a solid plan for her spike plate.
That left Hanano with two options: flush it down the toilet or keep it on her. To the bathroom she went!
For a brief moment, she considered getting rid of the evidence she had planned to plant in the dorms as well. However, there was still a chance that her plan wasn’t completely ruined and she didn’t want all of her hard work to, quite literally, go down the drain. There was no reason for anyone to suspect she had a copy of Kamimura’s key or a suspicious note. It would be fine.
After flushing the small bottle down one of the men’s toilets, Hanano began to walk towards the woodshop. She needed to figure out what to do about the trap that was still rigged there. It would be incredibly hazardous to disarm it (and, more than that, how mortifying would it be if the Phantom Thief of Nagoya went down to her own device?), so Hanano had little choice but to leave it up and just prevent anyone else from triggering it before she could figure out how to get Manami upstairs. She had made that spike plate to kill Tsuno Manami. Not anyone else.
The initial plan was supposed to take advantage of Manami’s disgustingly pure-hearted soul, because such a kind person would definitely volunteer to investigate what appeared to be the most dangerous area of the school after Kamimura died. But Kamimura was unfortunately very much alive. Hanano felt her blood pressure go up every time she remembered that small fact. Seriously, why couldn’t he just go back to his room like a good murder victim!
Her first thought was to simply tell Manami that Wada may or may not be in danger in the woodshop, and that she should probably head up there if she wanted her runty little passion project to be safe. It’d be a classic “villian kidnapping the hero’s loved ones” ploy! Hanano wouldn’t even actually have to do anything to him as long as Manami truly believed in Hanano’s capacity for evil. The issue with that, though, was once again Kamimura. Between him being drugged and Hayashi recovering from… whatever had happened to her, it would likely be impossible to get her out of the medbay and alone for any period of time. If Hasegawa or whoever else was down there sees Hanano threaten Manami, and then two minutes later Manami dies, it would lead to the most embarrassing trial ever. Hanano couldn’t go out in such a cringy—
“Hanano! What are you doing up here?” A cheerful voice called out from behind her. Nishi?
Hanano turned around to see Nishino walking towards her. That was not good. Why was she up here? Nishi didn’t need to be up here.
“Just doing my rounds as the Hall Overlord,” Hanano lied, “It’s been rather boring. I’ve only seen a couple people, and none of them were even running in the halls. I think we may need to loosen the definition.”
“No one’s doing anything because it’s way too cold!” Nishino whined, pulling one of the blankets from the storage room tighter around her shoulders. There were tiny woodland animals prancing around on it. Hanano looked but couldn’t see any foxes. “Like, I can’t even think half of the time, it’s so cold.”
“Why are you up here then, Nishi?”
“I’m sneaking into the woodshop to see how much wood we have.” Nishino held a finger to her mouth as she passed Hanano, taking a dramatically large step forward. “We were talking about burning it in the incinerators at breakfast before you came in, but I was thinking we could have a bonfire in the auditorium or something! I still have some fluid in my lighter. Everyone could get warm together! We could make s’mores! Mai probably makes the best s’mores!”
Hanano couldn’t let Nishi open that door. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
Nishino turned to face Hanano and gave her an exaggerated pout. “It’d be fine! I’ve done tons of bonfires before.”
“I feel like the smoke would be a greater issue than the fire itself. The ventilation here seems to be… rather limited.”
“Hanano,” Nishino dragged the final syllable of her alias out. Hanano liked it when she did that. “It’ll be fun! You could be the, like, Snack Overlord and hand out marshmallows and chocolate! It’d be a good way for you to make it up to people!”
Before Hanano could respond, a different voice came from behind them. “Miss Watari! Okazaki!”
Nishino quirked her eyebrows and leaned to the side. Hanano turned around to see Yanagi and Hama hurrying towards them with anxious looks on their faces. Could the situation stop getting worse? She needed to think of a plan quickly.
“What’s wrong?” Nishino asked.
“We need to check the woodshop,” Yanagi said. His usual "princely" affect was undercut by the tinge of anxiety in his voice.
Hanano was starting to fear that her entire plan was irrevocably ruined. What were the chances that something that didn’t involve her plan would lead people to worriedly go to the woodshop? “Did something happen?” she said, “I thought Hayashi had said the woodshop was off-limits. I’m somewhat surprised that you would go against her like that.”
Nishino shot her a look.
“I,” Yanagi clenched his one working hand. “I will have you know that she is aware that we are doing this.”
“What do you mean by ‘this?’ Seriously, what’s wrong?” Nishino asked again. Hanano didn’t like the face she was wearing. Nishino was the type who was always meant to be smiling.
Yanagi sighed and turned to Hama, who somehow looked more stiff than usual in a long-sleeved black flannel. Hama spoke: “Something fucked Kamimura up, and then Hiroaki and Ojima found a saw and knife in the art supply closet.” Was absolutely everything going to go awry today! Come the fuck on!, Hanano screamed in her head. All of her plans were going down the drain like that bottle of rohypnol. “That’s not painting a real badass picture, so Manami and Hasegawa sent us to investigate.”
Of course it was Manami! Her nemesis was ruining her plans as always! A part of Hanano was glad that it was her foil who was causing this stress, but even that joy couldn’t be fully relished in because Manami probably didn’t even know it was Hanano who had done everything!
“Kamimura?” Hanano said as calmly as she could manage, “That explains why Hasegawa was so worked up when I saw him earlier.”
“He is… quite concerned about Kamimura’s safety,” Yanagi said. So he was still completely freaking out, then.
Nishino spoke up. “Is Toshi okay?”
“He is… well, he is awake, at least.”
“He can’t really move and he keeps pitching fits,” Hama said bluntly. Upon seeing Nishino’s eyes widen in worry, he continued: “But he’s alive and everything. Probably doing the best he could be, considering he got roofied or something.” Great. They already think it was rohypnol. Hanano was starting to get seriously pissed off.
“Roofied!” Nishino exclaimed.
“A-anyways, if you will excuse us…” Yanagi said, speedily walking past them and reaching for the woodshop door.
Hanano realized that there was nothing she could do to prevent what was going to happen.
If she did anything to stop him, she would be more or less admitting to setting the trap, which would probably lead to her being caught for drugging Kamimura’s food and subsequently “arrested” for both of those crimes. It had been funny when Yanagi was locked up in the AV room, but they weren’t conditions Hanano was keen on experiencing first hand. Though, thinking about it, if Manami was her warden, maybe that would be bearable. To see her forced to pay attention to Hanano—well, she would pay a lot of money for that. It could be fun if it was Nishi. Maybe Hanano could convince her to stage a prison revolt or something? Still, at the end of the day, she would much rather not be imprisoned in a freezing school.
Those fantasies were pointless, though, because Yanagi was still reaching for the handle, still ruining her master scheme.
It finally hit Hanano that she wasn't going to be able to kill Manami how she had planned. She wasn’t going to be able to see Manami's beautiful, bloodied corpse and know that the Phantom Thief of Nagoya had gotten one over on the very concept of good itself. This wasn't fair. This was supposed to be fate. That's why they had both been put here, right! This wasn't fair.
Hanano took a step forward without thinking as Yanagi finally twisted the doorknob that Manami was meant to, speaking his stupid, stupid final words: “… we need to—”
Even though Hanano was expecting it, everything happened too quickly for her to catch anything but the broad strokes. The trap swung down. Yanagi was impaled. He squelched. A noise left his throat. His blood hit the floor. Yanagi died. Hama froze. He didn’t scream. He hadn’t even when Chiba had died, why would he now?
The rabbit’s disembodied voice echoed through the hallway. “Attention students. A body has been discovered.”
___________________________________________________
As she stared at Yanagi’s corpse and listened to the air conditioning power down, Hanano realized she had a decision to make.
The original plan was that after the ever-horrid Phantom Thief of Nagoya had triumphed over everything good and pure, Hanano would fool the rest of the idiots for a while during the trial before inevitably revealing her true nature with a big, classy monologue. And then once she had gotten her fill of the shock and terror they would all give her, she would go and enjoy her thematically resonant execution. She had actually spent some amount of time thinking about what it could be before deciding that it would be more fun for it to be a surprise.
But all of that was reliant on her succeeding in killing Tsuno Manami. Manami was still alive and Yanagi was dead instead. Hanano hadn’t particularly cared about him either way—his prince act was a little fun at times, but he was a rather wormish individual overall and easily became annoying. It seemed that annoying would forever be the way that she would think about him, now that he had gone and died in Manami’s place.
Was there a way that she could still kill Manami? Hanano didn’t want to die herself until she had gotten a good eyeful of Manami's corpse. And she had earned the right to kill her after all of her hard work! Hanano could technically run into the woodshop now that the trap had been set off, grab one of the knives, and stab her to death, but that would be lame! Not classy in the slightest!
Everyone, including Manami, would die if Hanano won the trial. She was obviously still on the hook for Yanagi’s stupid death. This plan had some merits—these people were stupid enough that she could probably get away with it, and even just imagining the look on Manami’s face when she realized that she had messed up and sentenced herself and those she cared about to death, all while Hanano gets to live, excited her. Manami’s execution was sure to be fun as well. Whoever was running this had a bit of a flair for the dramatic, and what was more dramatic than the death of a real superhero! It’d also get rid of the rest of the annoyances in the group as a bonus.
… But everyone, including Nishi, would die if Hanano won the trial. Nishino wasn’t supposed to die, Hanano didn’t want her to die. The whole reason she had picked now to enact her plan was because if the temperature kept dropping, someone would end up dying. If Hanano was the killer, though, she could ensure only the people she needed dead would die, and Nishino would be completely fine! She might be a tad torn up about Hanano’s death, but she’d get over it soon enough. Hanano had been somewhat unhappy about Harada dying, but she dealt with it. Nishi would too. She’d understand that this had to be done and there was no point in mourning her.
Hanano was ripped out of her thoughts by a loud scream and the thundering of shoes hitting the fake-wood flooring. The cavalcade had arrived, it seemed. Most of her so-called peers flooded into the hallway, all of them stopping several feet away from the body as if there was a barrier preventing them from going any further. Hanano counted everyone up. Manami wasn’t with them. Neither were Kamimura, Hasegawa, or Hayashi. She guessed it would be difficult to take two injured people up a couple of flights of stairs.
Tamba screamed again, her frankly ridiculously shrill voice making Hanano’s face scrunch up into a grimace.
“Oh God,” Hiroaki gagged and turned to face the wall like a child who had gotten in trouble.
“Yanagi!” Tamba screamed for the third time. Everyone could see that he was dead, Tamba! She was going to give Hanano a headache at this rate.
“What even…” Nishino mumbled from beside Hanano. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated from fear, and she held a hand up to her mouth. Hanano didn’t like that expression on her.
Monomoko teleported in, appearing mere centimeters from the large pool of blood that had begun to spread from underneath Yanagi. Tamba screamed once more, and a few other people jumped as well. “A student has been murdered by another student,” it said, “as you can clearly see.” It then went on the usual spiel about how they had some time to investigate before the trial and if they didn’t find the killer, everyone would be executed, yadayada. Hanano generally tuned these explanations out. They were rather repetitive.
The final four students hobbled in after the rabbit disappeared.
Hayashi was in front, eyebrows furrowed in determination. “Who is it?” she barked. Hanano could tell she was still recovering from her trip to the void or whatever. Her whole body was clenched, she was heavily favoring her right leg, and she looked incredibly sweaty despite the freezing temperature stopping only a few minutes ago.
“I-it’s…” Wada stuttered out.
Hayashi’s eyes hit Yanagi. She stopped moving, and for a split-second a pained expression covered her face before it was replaced by pure steel. Hanano had almost forgotten about whatever thing they had going on. She didn’t particularly care, though. “What happened?” Hayashi said, clearly trying and failing to keep all of the emotions out of her voice as she approached the body.
Before anyone could answer her, the stupidly alive Kamimura and his service animal of a partner came up from behind her. Hasegawa was supporting the entire weight of the shorter man, who was hanging off of him like a drunk. Kamimura’s face was droopy and he was struggling to keep his head up. Had Hanano used too high of a dose on him? Or maybe there was a bad interaction with the rohypnol and whatever weird disease(s) he had? No matter what, it was kind of deserved for how thoroughly he had screwed her over by not being kidnappable.
“H-holy shit, that’s a lotta blood,” Kamimura slurred out, “The fuck’s goin’ on?”
Finally, Manami appeared from the rear of the medbay party. She looked haggard, with bags under her eyes and grease in her hair. That was sad, she should know she needs to be in her best condition in order to fight off her nemesis!
“Yanagi!” Manami exclaimed, running up to the front of the group. Oh, right. Yanagi was her little nurse-in-training at the moment, of course she would be upset at his death. That was an unforeseen positive in this horrible situation: Hanano could watch Manami stew in the idea that she had failed to protect someone. “Who would even…” Me! I would! You should know this by now, Hanano thought.
Manami looked around the hallway until her eyes hit her favorite charity case. “Masa!” she said, going over and grabbing his hand, her face etched with worry. The small boy immediately crashed into her arms in an especially pathetic manner.
“Looks like we need to organize again,” Hanano said, taking a step forward and properly facing the whole group. It would be for the best if she could take some amount of control over the situation. “It would be bad if we—”
“G-give us a minute!” Manami said, anger in her voice at Hanano, before turning her head to look at Hayashi, “Mai, are—”
“I don’t understand why people always ask for a minute. They’re in quite limited supply.”
“Shut up, Okazaki!” Hiroaki yelled. He should stop talking big for someone still facing the wall. “We should do this like normal and divide up into pairs and a group of three. And we’ll stay in pairs this time.”
“Shigeki…” Ojima added unnecessarily, voice shaky. Hanano was impressed he was still with them. Not very impressed, since it was lame that he did that in the first place, but still.
“There are so many rooms, though! There’s always more of them and less of us!” Nishino said.
“Nishi has a point, the way we’ve been doing this may not cut it anymore,” Hanano added. It would be ideal if there was a non-suspicious way to "investigate" alone. She didn’t need someone looking over her shoulder while she attempted to salvage the burning wreckage of her plan.
“You can’t seriously be suggesting we split up!” Manami’s cheeks flushed, her eyebrows furrowed, and her nose cutely scrunched up with rage as she grit her teeth at her. That was the sort of expression she was meant to face Hanano with! She grinned from beneath the mask.
“For real,” Hama cut in. He had barely moved an inch since the spike plate swung, his eyes still on the body. “It almost fucked up the entire investigation last time we split up.”
Hayashi crossed her arms and took another step towards the body. Hanano could see that she was shaking from the effort merely standing required of her. She could respect that much from the bonehead, at least. She had seen far too many times what happened to a body that wouldn’t even try anymore. “We aren’t splitting up. Now focus. Kamimura and I are on body duty.”
“M-me too,” Hasegawa said. His wide eyes kept flicking between Kamimura and the body like something would happen to one of them if he didn’t keep both of them in his sight. “I’ll help.”
Kamimura made a failed movement, raising the arm not holding onto Hasegawa for a second before it dropped. “Hasegawa, I told you I’m fine! S-stop hovering so damn much!” It was frankly embarrassing to watch him try and lash out when he’d be on the floor if not for Hasegawa.
“So that’s our group of three, then,” Hiroaki stated, “Takeshi and I are obviously together.”
As expected, Manami asked to go with Wada. It would’ve been nice if Wada had gotten to see Manami get skewered by the spike plate. It would have ruined him, seeing his dear, perfect superhero die in front of him! Hanano could imagine his crying upon her practically dying in his arms, his normally too-pale face flushed with tears and snot. It could have been perfect!
If she had to go with someone, then it was clear that Hanano would go with Nishi. “Then I—”
“Watari and I can be together,” Hama cut Hanano off before she could claim Nishino as her investigation partner.
“Y-yeah, that’s fine,” Nishino said, slowly walking over to where Hama stood. Hanano stood with her mouth open for a second. Why would Nishino go with Hama? They were kind of close, sure, but Hanano was right beside her. Was she scared? There wasn’t anything left for her to be scared of in the school, and even if there was, Hanano could protect her just as well as Hama could.
And, plus, if Hanano didn’t go with Nishi, then that meant she’d be stuck with one of the many annoyances in the school! She ran through the students in her mind to see who she would be stuck with. There should only be one person left… Hanano preemptively grimaced.
“Okazaki, Tamba, that leaves you two as the last team,” Hayashi said.
Tamba was probably the largest moron in the world. Investigating with her during Isono’s case had been a massive pain; she was unobservant and constantly making the most inane theories with the first thing that popped into the space her brain was meant to occupy. Saying she had the intelligence of a goldfish was insulting to the fish.
“But I don’t really want to work with Tamba...”
“Well, sucks. No one gets to leave their partners.”
“Don’t worry, Okazaki!” Tamba said, giving Hanano a forced grin and thumbs-up. “I’ll be a big help, I promise!”
Hanano realized something, looking at Tamba’s tight smile and worried brows. If Tamba was an idiot who was unobservant and jumped to conclusions, she was probably the best person for Hanano to be stuck with. Win or lose, she would still want to plant the resin key and incriminating note in the dorms. She could potentially attempt to use it as an actual frame job, but even if that didn’t work, it would still add a whole fun second mystery! It would be incredibly easy for Hanano to do basically anything she wanted during the investigation if she was paired with Tamba. Now if they could get the dorms or the rest of the basement, that would be perfect.
“Okay, I guess…” Hanano didn’t bother to take the apprehension out of her voice. Even if Tamba could be useful to her at the moment, she still didn’t particularly want to spend time with her. Tamba was fun in the way that a moronic court jester was fun, but no one in their right mind would want to investigate a murder with a clown.
“We can take the dorms! Ken and I did a great job last time!” Tamba said. Yes! Finally something was going right for Hanano this morning.
“Sure, whatever,” Hayashi said, “That leaves the rest of the basement, the first floor, and the rest of this floor.”
“Tsuno, Wada: you take this floor. Takeshi and I will go to the first floor. That leaves Hama and Watari with the basement,” Hiroaki said. Having to investigate the second floor would have been the perfect situation for Manami to trigger the doortrap, if it had been for Kamimura’s death instead. Why was this the one part of Hanano’s plan that went as intended! She could feel the tension headache coming on.
“How are we supposed to sweep an entire floor?” Wada complained. He was no longer completely wrapped up in Manami’s arms, though they were still holding hands.
Hayashi rather gracelessly spun around to face the remaining student body. Being tortured or something would do that to a person, Hanano supposed. “Prioritize. If you don’t see something after a quick sweep, leave. Focus on rooms that could be suspicious. If you have time at the end, go back and check more thoroughly.”
“How do we know which rooms are safe, though?” Hanano took a step to the side to prevent the growing pool of blood from touching her overcoat. She didn’t want Yanagi’s blood on it. “There could be more traps.”
“Traps?” Hiroaki asked. He was still refusing to look at the body. Hanano was really stuck in here with a bunch of embarrassments.
“That was how Yanagi died. It's… kind of obvious considering the state of the body. He opened the woodshop door and that spike plate hit him. How do we know that there aren’t any other trapped doors?”
Hiroaki turned towards Hanano for a second, probably to make some lame jab back at her, but he saw Yanagi’s body, gagged, and turned back towards his wall. He was probably getting rather familiar with its imperfections. “Good point. I guess. I don’t want to get fucking gored trying to get into the music room or something.”
“Well, we hafta fuckin’ investigate,” Kamimura managed to say. Hanano was taking a fair amount of joy at the state he was in. Served him right. “There’s gotta be like, some way to tell or something. I think.”
“The basement is fine. People have been going in and out of rooms there all day.” Hayashi was starting to speak quicker, spitting her words out as if they were physically hurting her to keep in. She was getting rather impatient, hm?
“The chemistry lab is safe, too,” Hasegawa added, “I was there earlier this morning.”
“And the art room and its supply closet,” Ojima said. He was still turned towards the body, but he was looking over his shoulder to keep his gaze locked on Hiroaki.
“Can we open the doors without standing in front of them?” Manami suggested. Leave it to her to try and offer up a solution to the problem Hanano had created. “Maybe—”
“We’re wasting time just standing around here, right?” Hanano interrupted. God, could Manami give her that irate stare forever? “The teams going down to the basement are safe. We should go ahead and get started on those, unless we’ve decided that doing a trial with no evidence is a good idea?”
Ojima spoke up again. “Hanano’s right.” Hanano hated his insistence on calling people by their given name without asking. Who did he think he was, calling a phantom thief by their first name? They never talked, anyways! “Those teams might want to go ahead while we figure out the whole… door situation.”
“Yeah, sure, go,” Hayashi said, jerking her head back towards the main hallway.
Hanano nodded vaguely in the bounty hunter’s direction before pushing past the horde of fools and walking towards the stairwell. Tamba called out to her, asking her to wait, but Hanano carried on anyway, the short girl running to catch up to her swishing overcoat.
She really needed to figure out a plan. Almost everything had gone to hell.