Beside them, the more Tachikawa Chizuru listened to this account, the more familiar it sounded.
She remembered how she had knocked on the door looking for the victim, only to be perfunctorily dismissed. Suddenly realizing that Edward had actually been the one responding from inside the restroom, she rolled up her sleeves. "...Who are you calling easy to fool?!"
Jiang Xia looked at the four suspects and casually arranged them in order:
"In other words, the sequence of events was roughly this: the victim's girlfriend, Ms. Amano, felt airsick and asked the flight attendant for motion sickness medicine.
"Before the flight attendant went to get the medicine, the 'sleeping victim' was still sitting beside Ms. Amano. But when she returned a minute later with the medicine, the seat beside Ms. Amano was empty.
"About twenty minutes after that, Mr. Edward went to the restroom to meet the victim for a deal, only to find that the victim was already dead inside.
"At that point, Ms. Tachikawa also happened to go looking for the victim in the restroom. When she knocked, Mr. Edward knocked back from inside, responding to her. Believing everything was normal, Ms. Tachikawa returned to her seat. Later, Mr. Edward also slipped back to his seat.
"And throughout all of this, Mr. Saganuma was asleep."
Saganuma Noboru nodded vigorously. "That's right!"
Edward frowned at Jiang Xia. "The victim's group of four was traveling together. The other three happened to fill one row, while only Saganuma sat directly behind the victim. I can't possibly have remembered that wrong.
"At least about this, I wasn't lying—I really did notice that the seat behind the victim was empty earlier. Saganuma definitely wasn't in his seat the whole time. Besides, with a trip this long, who could really sit still for ten