The So-Called "Curse"

"I-I, why would I do something like that? What reason would I have?" Nakao said frantically.

"You're in league with that guy named Pegasus, aren't you?" Narcissist stared at him and asked.

Nakao retorted agitatedly, "How could that be? And I wasn't the one who killed Mr. Kinoshita either. I just—"

"You just what?" Amaki looked over as well.

Faced with their questioning, Nakao quickly gave in. "Fine, I admit it—I found Mr. Kinoshita's body before I went down there. But—I really didn't kill him. I only took something from him—"

Nakao's voice weakened.

"What did you take?" Amaki frowned. During the earlier examination of the scene, he had noticed signs that Mr. Kinoshita's jacket pockets might have been searched. However, since there had still been other items in them, there was no way to determine whether Kinoshita himself had done it before his death.

"It was—the account ledger. That Kinoshita guy looked like an investor on the surface, but he was actually a despicable blackmailer.

"Before—I used the convenience of the factory to, um, dispose of some garbage. Mm—I made a little money off it. Somehow, Kinoshita found out and used it to blackmail me." Nakao looked somewhat guilty.

"Garbage? Don't tell me—you helped people dispose of bodies too?" Narcissist looked at him suspiciously.

After all, hearing a Beika resident say he helped dispose of "garbage" at a factory in Beika Town sounded terrifying no matter how one put it—

"Of course not! Just garbage—burnable garbage! I was just burning it illegally!" Nakao hurriedly explained, no longer bothering to hide it.

"Really?" Narcissist continued to eye him suspiciously.

"I—I found him lying by those stone steps and immediately ran over from the nearby footbridge. When I got close, I realized he was already dead. I wasn't holding out much