Since It Was a Locked Room...

Although Misumi said a great deal, Shiraishi only truly became convinced that there was more to the case after seeing the photographs—

A week earlier, on her way to work in the morning, Misumi heard cries of alarm from upstairs and witnessed Kuwajima Yuji's death!

Strictly speaking, Kuwajima Yuji was not really Misumi's neighbor—he had rented the apartment above hers solely to keep his "pets," a whole room full of spiders—

That morning, Mrs. Kuwajima went to the spider room because her husband had not returned home all night, only to find him collapsed and dead. By the time Misumi arrived after hearing the scream, he had already been dead for some time, and the stiffness of his body was extremely apparent.

Judging from the condition of the body, it matched the characteristics of death by poisoning. Misumi had noticed at the time that his lips were cyanotic, there were faint bite marks on his palm, and the surrounding flesh was suppurating and ulcerated—

Moreover, serum was found in the refrigerator at the scene, yet the deceased had made no attempt to take it out and inject himself. Misumi persuaded the family to allow an autopsy.

Afterward, distinctive toxins were found in the deceased's liver and kidneys, matching the toxic characteristics of funnel-web spiders. There was slight stress edema in the heart and pulmonary congestion, consistent with impaired ventilation following respiratory paralysis. The wound also matched a spider injury—

Everything pointed to spider venom poisoning!

Other than the fact that the deceased had acted like a robot before his death, neither injecting the serum right beside him nor asking anyone for help, everything seemed to indicate that Misumi had made the wrong call—he had simply been poisoned to death by his own pet.

There were also no marks of restraint