In the venue, the guests watched the stage, waiting for the finale runway show that had yet to begin.
Meanwhile, in a guest room, someone held Binoculars to the window and secretly observed the banquet hall.
After finishing a round of games, Kurosawa Kazuma glanced at Hashimoto Maya. "What are you doing?"
Hashimoto Maya silently sighed. "The finale model still hasn't appeared. Do you think she's dead?"
"?" Kurosawa Kazuma eyed him suspiciously. "Have you been reading too many mystery novels lately?"
"You wouldn't understand," Hashimoto Maya said vaguely.
That afternoon, he had idly fiddled with the room's internal telephone. He did not know whether he was lucky or unlucky, but after tinkering with it for a while, he had actually overheard a crossed line.
The voice had been intermittent, and many details were impossible to make out, but there was one thing Hashimoto Maya had understood.
—Someone was manipulating that young model into killing someone, and a second Murder Case would occur tonight.
Did I stumble onto Uzo's scheme in action?
Over the past few hours, Hashimoto Maya had gone over and analyzed that overheard conversation in his mind no fewer than a hundred times:
So Uzo controls people by giving them direct orders? No, that's far too conspicuous. Unless Uzo can be one hundred percent certain that the person he manipulates will die before revealing the truth, there's no way to explain how he has hidden his identity and murders so perfectly.
It's easy to find out. Just see whether that young model dies after she kills someone.
*But if it isn't Uzo, who else would use such vile manipulation to murder someone? Come to think of it, whether this "Funeral Silver Coin" is Uzo or not, judging by how familiar Funeral Silver Coin is with this place,