Pathway to Japanese Literature

The bride’s car had collided.

“Where is the bride’s car?” they said.

“It still hasn’t arrived—what could have happened? The express was departing in just five minutes!”

“Shall we go meet them?” someone suggested.

The people gathered in the waiting room at Tokyo Station, their unease growing by the minute, peered out into the pitch-black darkness from the entrance and glanced around at the shops and third-class waiting area.

“Aren’t they in the walkway?”

“They might have already boarded.”

As they exchanged these words, those who had gone to the ticket gate discovered that the express had already departed. Looking utterly bewildered, they came face-to-face with another group descending from the walkway.

“The newlyweds wouldn’t take the train.”

“Didn’t they depart from Shinbashi?”

“That can’t be. Given that Mr. Sekiya from her family and even the matchmaker were seen at this station.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

In the midst of this debate, a luxury car pulled up to the boarding area, and from it flew out a lovely girl of about thirteen or fourteen like a gust of wind.

“Ah! Miss Yumiko, what happened?”

Mrs. Sekiya Bunzaburou, who served as both the bride’s legal guardian and acting parental family, asked.

“Sister Shiiko—”

“What happened to Ms. Shiiko?”

Sekiya Bunzaburou pushed through the crowd and arrived—a steady man who appeared to be a middle-aged salaried worker, this being the very person who had been caring for Shiiko, the wealthy orphan who had inherited a vast fortune, like his own daughter for the past four or five years.

“A rundown taxi collided with the car Brother and the others were riding in.”

“What?!”

“Are they unhurt?”

A large crowd of people surrounded young Yumiko and bombarded her with a barrage of questions.

“Sister Shiiko—”

Yumiko finally caught her breath.

“That’s terrible!”

“It’s not serious, but the driver is badly injured—they say he might not survive.”

“Let’s turn back immediately.”

The Sekiya couple and their close friends immediately had their car driven to the Haruto residence in Shibuya.
As they listened to Yumiko’s explanation along the way—the car carrying groom Haruto Ryoichi and bride Shiiko had no sooner departed from the Haruto residence in Shibuya than a rundown taxi, as if lying in wait, came flying out from a dark alley and slammed at full speed into the side where Shiiko sat.

“Sister Shiiko was thrown sideways and showered with glass shards, but since Brother shielded her, she only suffered minor cuts on her hands and feet.”

“And then?”

“Using the car that came afterward, they took the driver to the hospital, and Sister Shiiko went back home with Mother to tend to her injuries. She asked me to give everyone her regards.”

As if suddenly remembering, Yumiko gave a quick bow.

The younger sister of the groom Haruto Ryoichi—a late-born fourteen-year-old in the highest grade of elementary school and the most popular student in the school.

Inside the lipstick—a terrifying poison.

Car collisions were common enough, but dashing out from the darkness to slam into the bride’s car at full speed showed a bit too much deliberation.

Moreover, with the headlights remaining off and uncertainty about whether there had even been a license plate—Haruto Ryoichi stated he likely hadn’t seen one—the police could no longer dismiss the matter.

The other car vanished completely without a trace, and as time passed, there remained no clues to track it down.
Given the severity of the collision, their own vehicle must have sustained considerable damage too—but having apparently been quickly stowed away in a garage, by the time anyone noticed, not a shadow nor shape of it remained.

The bride Shiiko was a girl raised in utter purity, with no shadowy past nor any memory of earning others' resentment—yet someone must have opposed this marriage and attempted to kill her; it was only natural that the police arrived at this commonsense conclusion.
Shiiko was beautiful and wealthy enough that such suspicions about her seemed far from unreasonable.

The injuries were not serious, but even so, due to the mother’s concern that nothing should go wrong during their travels, the honeymoon was called off entirely.

The next morning,

“Miss Yumiko, you must not go there.”

Yumiko, who was trying to enter the bride’s dressing room, was spotted by her mother and scolded for her impropriety.

“But—”

“What do you mean ‘but’?”

“Because Sister Shiiko says it’s alright!”
“Moreover, you yourself said that makeup is a field of study, Mother!”

“Oh, you...”

Mother was left speechless as well.

In the meantime, Yumiko—who had slipped into the dressing room—gazed at the indescribably beautiful Shiiko from behind, front, and side while tending to her makeup with meticulous care: now fetching Kotty’s face powder for her, now handing her cream, now gently smoothing her hair, bursting with curiosity as she attended to the bride she had known well even before this day.

“Oh, isn’t there something wrong with that lipstick?”

Yumiko picked up the stick lipstick in front of the mirror and stopped Shiiko’s hand as she was about to bring it to her lips.

“Since we’re not going on the trip anymore, I took out a flesh-colored one from the Boston bag—a too-red one would look odd, don’t you think?”

Shiiko still didn’t realize anything.

“There’s a hole right in the middle of this lipstick—and see, tiny little droplets are clinging here.”

Yumiko took it in her hand and sniffed the tiny droplets that had seeped out at the tip of the stick lipstick.

"This is terrible, Sister—I don't fully understand it myself, but I think it smells like the cyanide I encountered during chemistry experiments."
"If that's true, whoever uses this lipstick might die."

"Oh!"

"Wait a moment."

Yumiko dashed out with the stick lipstick in hand.

Suspicion turned to the Ujiie youth—the suitor.

When they had it examined at the hygiene laboratory, they discovered that inside the lipstick Shiiko had been about to use lay a scheme rare in criminal history.

I cannot describe it in detail, but in any case, there was a small vertical hole in the center of the stick lipstick that appeared to have been pierced with a sewing needle, and inside this hole had been placed enough potent poison to kill thirty people.

The top of the hole was plugged with lipstick debris, so had she set off on the trip unaware, the poison would have taken effect around the third day, and the bride would have died during her journey.

“Thank you, Miss Yumiko.”
“Thanks to you, my life was saved.”

Shiiko said that and took Yumiko’s hand. Shiiko was usually composed, but even she turned deathly pale upon hearing this. Car collisions may occur by chance, but putting potent poison into a lipstick—no matter how you consider it—could not be an accident or a prank.

She thought of going to the police immediately—but causing such a commotion so soon after the wedding seemed unwise, so she silenced Yumiko and kept quiet.

However, the incident did not end there.
The driver of the car that had carried the bride and groom the previous night had died from his injuries, and with the discovery through the hygiene laboratory that poison had been planted in the lipstick, the Metropolitan Police Department and the local police station launched a full-scale investigation—arresting a young man as a suspect that very day.

The suspect was a young engineer named Ujiie Ryutaro, who had proposed to Shiiko time and time again—but since Shiiko was betrothed to Haruto Ryoichi, she rejected him on each occasion. After Shiiko’s marriage became certain, he had spoken of abandoning the mainland altogether—of going to Manchuria or some such place to find a grand undertaking to devote his life to—and this was the young man in question.

What made matters worse was that on the evening Shiiko was injured, he had refused to say where he had been from ten to eleven o'clock, and there was a large wound on the back of his right hand—likely caused by glass fragments or something similar.
Given that someone had caused such a severe collision, it was only natural that the windows of the car responsible for the impact would have shattered—and considering Ryutaro had been gripping the steering wheel, anyone would think it perfectly reasonable that he sustained an injury to the back of his hand.

With this alone, he might have had a way to escape blame—but the poisoned lipstick was one of the splendid cosmetic sets that Ryutaro’s sister Masako had sent to Shiiko as a wedding gift, and while it remained in his sister’s room, he had opportunities to tamper with it. Moreover, it was discovered that Ryutaro had regularly used that very poison as an industrial chemical in his work. Thus, suspicion soon came to be regarded as the most certain of facts.

“Mr. Ujiie is absolutely not that kind of person.”

Shiiko’s husband, Haruto Ryoichi, was the first to declare this.

“That’s right—Ryutaro-kun is not such a cowardly man. There seems to be a terrible mistake here.”

His friends also began voicing similar opinions and made various attempts to help, but there was too much evidence to find any way to intervene.

Haruto Ryoichi’s father had been the manager of a renowned large department store, but after his passing two or three years prior, his surviving son Ryoichi worked as a young employee at that same department store. Through these circumstances, though now merely an unassuming young man, he remained known in society as the heir of an esteemed family, and there was also an honest legal advisor who had been associated with them for decades—

“I must save Mr. Ujiie.”

When he resolutely made up his mind, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to gathering counter-evidence to prove Ujiie Ryutaro’s innocence.

She intended to conduct detective work with Ryutaro’s sister.

“Youko.”

“Oh! Miss Yumiko.”

The two of them rushed over and took each other’s hands.
Youko was the sister of Ujiie Ryutaro—now detained pending trial—and at thirteen years old, one year younger than Yumiko. Though they attended different schools, their families were well acquainted through household connections. Moreover, having promised to enroll in the same girls’ school starting in April, they had become study partners who encouraged each other while preparing for the entrance exams.

“Youko, that’s truly awful.”

“Thank you, Miss Yumiko. My mother and sister must be so relieved—your brother has been going to great lengths, insisting there’s no way my brother would do such a thing.”

Youko was already crying.
Since her brother Ryutaro—a promising young engineer said to hold six or seven patents despite his youth—was detained on suspicion of murder， her family’s anxiety was no ordinary matter.

“Youko， you look pale.”
“The suspicion against your brother will certainly be cleared， so you really shouldn’t worry so much.”

“But you see—my mother has…lately she’s been crying every day—and these past two or three days she hasn’t eaten a thing， just lies in bed… Since she’s grown old， the doctor says we should worry more about her than my brother.”

“I see...”

“Yumiko, who really caused the car collision that killed the driver and tried to kill Sister Shiiko by putting poison in the lipstick?”

The two of them were walking through the Meiji Shrine Outer Garden, bathed in the spring sunlight.
Both were dressed in light Western attire—Yumiko in a cream-colored jacket and Youko in a white sailor dress—their long haircuts swaying in the gentle breeze. To an unknowing observer, they might have appeared as two girls blissfully lost in a carefree stroll.

“Shall I try doing some detective work?”

“…………”

“I’m sure, I’m sure—I think I can figure something out.”

“You?”

Youko’s eyes widened.
The idea was simply too outlandish.
But Yumiko was only fourteen, yet she was a girl with an exceptionally sharp mind—one who could solve even the most difficult puzzles or mysteries within thirty minutes, and who particularly excelled at arithmetic. In fact, her talent was such that even the school’s proud math teacher, a graduate of a Higher Normal School, was said to be astonished by it. Remembering this, she began to feel that Yumiko might indeed be capable of being a detective.

“Keep this quiet, okay, Youko? It would be so embarrassing if people laughed at us—I’ll tell Mr. Ishii what I’ve found out myself and have him put in the legwork.”

Ishii Santarou was the name of the Haruto family’s legal advisor.

“If it’s you, Yumiko, I’m sure a good idea will come to mind.”
“So what exactly will you do first?”

The two of them leaned against the stone wall in front of the fountain and put their heads together as if pondering a math assignment.

Yumiko’s detective work proceeded in this manner.

Yumiko and Youko met up every day after school at the Outer Garden, then traveled back and forth countless times between the gate of the Haruto family home in Shibuya, the alley where the car collision had occurred, and Tokyo Station.

“Brother, the car collided head-on, didn’t it? Since they wrecked our car so completely and theirs drove off unscathed, don’t you think it must have been some special kind of vehicle—like a sturdy truck or a racing car—?”

Yumiko asked her brother Ryoichi such questions.

“It wasn’t a truck—but it might have been a racing car.”

“Even if the headlights weren’t on, wouldn’t our lights reflect and make them visible?”

“That’s what’s strange. Since it happened in an instant, I can’t say for sure, but I have a feeling it was a plain, featureless car without headlights or anything.”

“Brother, that’s strange.”

After saying this, Yumiko next headed to the bride Shiiko's room.

“Sister, around what time did Mr. Ryutaro’s sister bring that cosmetic case?”

“Well, I believe it was about a week before the wedding.”

Because Yumiko’s questioning flowed so naturally, Shiiko inadvertently answered without resistance.
The preference for uncurled hair remained simple, while the faintest touch of makeup seemed to emit its own fragrance—all contributing to an elegant beauty.

“Where did you keep the cosmetic case during that week?”

“In my room—I stored it with the numerous congratulatory gifts.”

“Sister, did you open it during that time?”

“No.”

“So if someone were to quietly take just the stick lipstick and return it to the case two or three days later, no one would notice, would they?”

“That may be so, but...”

“You’re saying Mr. Sekiya has no one who could be suspected, aren’t you?”

“Oh?”

Shiiko nodded.
Though Shiiko possessed substantial wealth, while the household head—her brother—was abroad, the distantly related Sekiya couple had served as her guardians for years without incident. Moreover, had someone truly wished to kill Shiiko and claim her fortune, they would have had countless opportunities before the wedding ceremony itself. By any reasonable measure, this left no grounds for suspicion.

Yumiko then and there invited Youko and went to visit Ishii Santarou, the legal advisor who had an office in Kanda.

“Oh, Miss Haruto, what on earth is this about?”

The salt-and-pepper-haired Lawyer Ishii swiveled his revolving chair around to face these unexpected guests.

“This is Ms. Youko, Mr. Ujiie’s sister.—Once it’s proven that Mr. Ujiie’s brother neither crashed the car nor put poison in the lipstick, he should be forgiven immediately, don’t you think?”

“That goes without saying, young lady, but producing such counter-evidence is no simple matter.
“Mr. Ujiie won’t even say where he was from ten to eleven o’clock that night—”

Lawyer Ishii said in a tone one might use to placate a schoolchild sulking over review lessons—a dismissive manner that seemed to say, "Now, now, let’s not go to unnecessary trouble."

“I’ve figured everything out. The problem was that until now, everyone had simply decided Mr. Ujiie was the villain.”

“Oh, that’s quite something!”

Lawyer Ishii Santarou said this with his mouth but showed no sign of actually following through.

Astonishing Insight—The Girl Resolves All Doubts

“Uncle Ishii, I heard the police couldn’t find the racing car used that night even after searching?”
“Even racing cars have headlights, don’t they?”
“Brother said the car he saw was a plain, featureless one without any headlights.”

“Hmm.”

Cornered by this line of questioning, old Lawyer Ishii groaned.

“What if they armored an ordinary car by attaching triangular iron plates to the front? After causing the collision and fleeing, if they hid those plates, no one would notice. That area past ten o’clock is rarely frequented by anyone anyway.”

“Young lady, you’re making quite an assertion.”

“Then we went door-to-door in that neighborhood and found someone who saw a peculiar car idling with its engine running right before the collision.”

“Wh-what?—This is news to me!”
“But that alone won’t exonerate Mr. Ujiie.”

“Mr. Ujiie is fastidious—they say he never touches a steering wheel with bare hands when driving.”
“Had he been wearing gloves, even if the windshield shattered, he wouldn’t have sustained those injuries on his knuckles.”

“Hmm.”

Yumiko’s deductions had finally become impossible to dismiss.

“And then, there is someone who saw Mr. Ujiie on Tokyo Station’s platform between ten and eleven o’clock that night.”

“What? Is that true? Then why did Mr. Ujiie keep silent about that?” Lawyer Ishii said.

“He felt awkward about it, you see. Initially, Mr. Ujiie must have come to Tokyo Station intending to see Sister Shiiko off on her honeymoon, but due to various circumstances, he didn’t want to be seen by others—Sister Masako said (‘Perhaps my younger brother went to Tokyo Station that night’. He might have intended to secretly see Ms. Shiiko off while hiding from people,’ Sister Masako said.’ So we immediately went to Tokyo Station, searched out the station worker who was on the platform that night, and questioned him.”

“Did Masako also see that?”

“No, the one who saw Mr. Ujiie at the station was a Tokyo Station worker, you see. At the stairs of the exit far away, there was a person who had been standing for a full hour, hiding their face with a muffler,”—the station worker said.—“Because it was so unusual, the station worker said he had taken a good look at both the person’s face and appearance.”

“There’s no mistake that it was Mr. Ujiie, correct?”

“A camel-hair black hat, Lloyd glasses—those alone might be common enough, but the station worker saw this person collide with a redcap’s luggage and injured the back of their hand. Since the redcap wasn’t at fault, the one hiding their face apologized to him while binding the wound with a handkerchief—and all the while, they never took their eyes off the Kobe-bound express train.”

Yumiko investigated thoroughly.
Lawyer Ishii too was astonished by these two girls' fervor and sharp wits, but—

“What about the poison in the lipstick?”

They had reached the final major doubt.

“In Sister Shiiko’s needle case, there was a single needle with about one centimeter of lipstick stuck to it.”

“……”

“Sister Shiiko apparently doesn’t know about it either.
In the first place, she says she’s been so busy lately that she hadn’t had time to take up a needle——”

“……”

“Probably, they made a hole in the lipstick stick with a needle and injected the poison using a syringe.
At that moment, perhaps because someone nearly saw them or something, they managed to hide the syringe but couldn’t conceal the sewing needle.”

“So—?”

Old Lawyer Ishii groaned, overwhelmed by the girl’s ingenuity.

“The villain was on Sister Shiiko’s side.”
“It’s not Mr. Ujiie.”
“First of all, if Sister Shiiko had died from that lipstick stick, wouldn’t Mr. Ujiie have been the first to be suspected?”

Her fearsome intellect left not a shadow of doubt.

“Understood, young lady. Let’s go at once.”
“Your brother will probably be cleared.”

When Lawyer Ishii said this and turned around, Youko in her white sailor suit was already so soaked with tears that she couldn’t even raise her face.

From outside the window, Shiiko was shot.

Ujiie Ryutaro was immediately cleared. With this much counter-evidence having come to light, they could no longer keep him detained as an unresolved case even for a day. However, the villain who had been suppressing the commotion until then, the moment Ujiie Ryutaro became a free man, once again extended their fearsome hand and pressed close to Shiiko's surroundings.

One day, someone from an electric company came saying, “We need to check for any electrical leaks.”

The man who had come saying this went around inspecting the lights in each room, but that night, when Shiiko—intending to enter the bedroom—pulled the cord of the parlor’s decorative lamp,

“Ah!”

She let out a scream and jumped back.

The large lampshade above her head—a frosted glass piece adorned with cut-glass decorations, weighing who knew how many kilograms—came crashing down toward her with terrifying force.

In the blink of an eye, she managed to dodge and escape without serious injury, but had it fallen straight onto her head, it’s unclear what might have become of Shiiko.

Upon later investigation, it was found that someone had removed the screw securing the large lampshade, rigged it with thin wire, and set up a mechanism so that when the lamp cord was pulled downward toward "off," the shade would come crashing down.

It must have been the work of someone who had thoroughly known that Shiiko was supposed to turn off the lights in the parlor and study.

This incident had also been reported to the police, but since the identity of the fake electrician could not be determined, they had no leads whatsoever on the culprit.

Around that time, Master Ryoichi was scheduled to go on a business trip to Osaka for company matters.

“Since it’s such a dangerous time, perhaps I should speak thoroughly with the company and have someone else go in your place,” she said, but—

“It’s alright, Brother. I’ll take care of it.”
Yumiko said something that seemed confident while smiling cheerfully.

“In that case, I’ll leave it to the lady detective. The Osaka business should be wrapped up in two days anyway.”

Knowing the skill with which Ujiie Ryutaro had been cleared, Brother Ryoichi set off for Osaka with peace of mind.

That night.

Two villains had sneaked into the garden of the Haruto household.

Picking their way through the tree shadows, they headed toward Shiiko’s living room while—
“Oh, this is tailor-made for us.
“By the window, turned away from us—she’s sitting there knitting—”

“Shh—”

The two villains sneaked to within five or six meters of the window.

The window remained closed, but behind the glass, a beautiful light filled the space, clearly outlining Shiiko's upper body from behind as she leaned against the chair by the window. Her usual simple bun revealed a nape so translucent it seemed to glow, with a glimpse of warm cheeks—even the pattern of what appeared to be her lined kimono looked close enough to touch.

"The neck or the torso?"

"Aim for the heart—don't you miss."

“Don’t worry, my pistol skills are a point of pride.”

One of them raised his hand.
The small pistol glinted; Shiiko, completely unaware, was likely thinking about her husband who had gone to Osaka.
Her knitting hands remained still for some time.

“Now!”

A low, thudding sound—as if something had been crushed—probably because the gun must have had a silencer.

Simultaneously, as a terrifying sound rang out and the windowpane shattered, Shiiko’s body seemed to twitch slightly.
The two villains fled without even taking a moment to ascertain it.
At the same instant as the flash, the dagger struck her chest—

Strangely enough, the Haruto household made no commotion.
The next morning’s newspapers made no mention of Shiiko being shot or injured. Even more astonishingly, Shiiko—who should have been shot last night—was cheerfully talking with Yumiko from morning onward and occasionally came out to the garden to admire the early-blooming cherry buds.

“A mischievous child broke the windowpane.
Please have it repaired by this afternoon.”

Yumiko could even be heard giving such instructions to the attendants.

If the villains who had sneaked in last night were to see this scene, how astonished they would have been!

The following evening,

The two villains sneaked into the garden once again.

“What happened to your handiwork last night? It’s only because they think some town brats broke the window with a slingshot that we’re getting away with this—otherwise there’s no way we could’ve come back tonight. Your vaunted skills aren’t worth a damn.”

“That’s strange. If that shot didn’t pierce her heart, maybe she’s wearing a bulletproof vest?”

“Would a young woman even wear something like that?”

“The bullet must’ve hit the windowpane and veered off, Boss.”

“Is that so? Anyway I can’t leave tonight’s job to you. I’ll have you handle lookout.”

“So you’re handling it yourself, Boss?”

“Of course.”

The taller man circled around to the building’s rear, gripped the window frame, and quietly leaned half his body forward to peer through the deep window. That night, rather than shooting through the living room glass as before, they had likely opted to storm Shiiko’s bedroom directly. The larger man worked intently on modifying the window until finally prying open the solid panel door; once he slid the glass door aside, he hurled himself into the room without pause.

Inside, a lone fluorescent bedroom lamp cast an eerie glow, yet Shiiko on the bed displayed no reaction to the commotion. She lay turned away, revealing a profile of such ethereal beauty as she slept peacefully—her breathing steady and undisturbed. The villain advanced several steps. As he trod upon the exquisite carpet beneath the bed and swung his readied dagger downward, something flashed brightly before his eyes.

“Ah!”

Startled, he swung down the dagger—and there it was, plunged hilt-deep into the chest of Shiiko lying on the bed.

A life-risking scheme—how pitiful the doll was.

Early the next morning, Shiiko's guardian Sekiya Bunzaburou was arrested at his home while still in his sleepwear.

It was none other than Sekiya Bunzaburou and his henchmen who had caused the car collision, laced the lipstick with poison, tampered with the decorative lights, and shot and stabbed Shiiko.

Sekiya Bunzaburou was originally a ruffian who had been driven around as far as China, but when Shiiko’s brother went abroad, he returned to Japan with an honest-looking face, skillfully ingratiated himself with the relatives, became Shiiko’s guardian, and proceeded to claim her vast fortune piece by piece for himself or squander it recklessly.

Because killing Shiiko while she remained under his guardianship would immediately cast suspicion upon himself, Sekiya Bunzaburou had deliberately rushed her marriage to the Haruto family. Anticipating the customary interval—six months or three months—between the wedding ceremony and legal registration as per societal norms, he contrived to have her killed at the Haruto household before the official registry could be completed, engineering it so that suspicion would fall upon either her husband Ryoichi or her former suitor Ujiie Ryutaro.
Needless to say, had Shiiko died before the legal registration, her entire fortune would have fallen under her guardian Sekiya Bunzaburou’s complete control.

However, the iron covering that had been wrapped around the front of the car to cause the collision was found at their house along with the arrest of his henchmen, but they absolutely refused to confess to the other matters. After putting him through considerable trouble,

“How about this? Still going to claim you don’t remember?”

When a single photograph was thrust before him by the police inspector handling the interrogation, Sekiya Bunzaburou began dripping with cold sweat,

“I surrender.
“It was my wrongdoing.”

And he confessed everything at once.
The photograph showed Sekiya Bunzaburou raising a dagger, poised to stab the woman lying on the bed in the bedroom.
Although he had pulled his hat low over his eyes and turned up his coat collar, the photograph had been taken from below as he stretched his neck forward, so anyone who saw it could tell at a single glance that it was Sekiya Bunzaburou.

At that very moment at the Haruto residence, master Ryoichi had returned from Osaka and was quietly listening to the full account of the incident.

"So I thought, if Sister Shiiko was going to be targeted anyway, I’d lure the villain out and expose their true identity," Yumiko explained.

"That’s reckless, Yumiko."

Ryoichi was utterly astonished by his younger sister’s bold plan.

“But there was no other way! So—remember that mannequin doll Father had the store transfer to us two or three years ago? You know, the wax doll that caused such a sensation at the exposition!”

“Hmm.”

“I dressed the doll in Sister Shiiko’s kimono and placed it by the window.”
“Then they mistook it for a real person and fired a pistol from outside.”

“That was dangerous!”

“And then, the next day after I deliberately had Sister Shiiko go out to places like the garden to thoroughly confuse them—that night I put the doll to sleep in the bedroom and Sister stayed in my room.”

“……”

“So the villain came and stabbed the doll.”
“A switch had been hidden under the carpet so that when stepped on, a bulb-type flash device would light up and trigger the camera shutter to open.”
“Sister Shiiko also helped me prepare that setup.”

“I must say, that’s astonishing.”
Ryoichi too was at a loss for words in the face of his little sister’s wisdom and actions.

“But poor thing—the doll was shot in the chest and stabbed and all. Today let’s invite Youko and her brother and hold a celebration with everyone. Come on, let’s do it!”

“……”

Ryoichi and Shiiko exchanged a glance and smiled happily.

That afternoon, how lively the Haruto household was.