Suzuki Sonoko blinked when Jiang Xia looked at her, desperately trying to make her blank mind work as she answered first:
"They're all scary, they can all kill people, and they... they all happened at school!"
"..." Jiang Xia nodded. "Yeah, that's true..."
Kudo Shinichi looked at the ginkgo tree swaying in the wind before him and sighed. "All the incidents happened at night—that is, 'after school.' The Seventh Great Mystery is the same. And all these locations have been sealed off. There are even such tall fences around the ginkgo tree. If we force our way in..."
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a security guard. The man was pacing back and forth ten meters away, keeping a wary eye on these "troublesome students."
—Earlier, the high school students had visited two or three of the "mystery" sites. After finding every one of them locked, they had finally been unable to resist trying to pick the locks.
But only seconds after they started working on a keyhole, the guard had suddenly appeared behind them and stopped them.
...Since then, the guard had been lingering near them like a Back Spirit, cutting off any hope of sneaking inside to investigate.
Following Kudo Shinichi's gaze, Jiang Xia glanced at the guard and said quietly:
"He has a walkie-talkie on his belt. When we passed the guard station earlier, I remember there being three or four other people inside. If we pin this guard down and force our way in, he'll probably call his companions immediately.
"But there won't be this many guards at the school at night. There's a shift schedule posted on the wall, and only one person is on duty each night. If we want to investigate those 'mystery' sites, breaking through the guards' defenses