Takamori Masumi turned from the window and looked at President Inozuka, who had given her modeling work after she entered society and promoted her all the way. Her eyes were hidden in the shadow cast by her hair as she murmured, "I'm the 'Funeral Silver Coin'? How can you say something like that so casually...?"
Watching her expression, Inozuka Jiro vaguely sensed that something was wrong. He warily rose from beside the corpse, wary of this woman suddenly going mad and lunging at him to tear him apart. "Aren't you? Then tell me—why are you standing in a room like this, sealed up like a locked room?"
Hearing his utterly confident questioning, and the genuine confusion in his words, Takamori Masumi suddenly recalled an unforgettable scene from elementary school—
The pair of beautiful little birds the class had raised had inexplicably pushed their own eggs from the nest, smashing them to bits. Yet they stood atop the corpses of their children as though nothing had happened, hopping about innocently and adorably before the class.
"I once respected you as an elder—no, even as a father. When I was trying to figure out who the 'Funeral Silver Coin' was, you were the first person I ruled out. But..."
Takamori Masumi let out a despairing sneer. She suddenly raised her hand. In the hand hidden behind her back was a loaded pistol. She demanded furiously, "Why am I standing in this room...? Shouldn't I be asking you that, 'Funeral Silver Coin'!!"
Bang!
From less than three meters away, the gunshot and spray of blood erupted almost at the same instant.
The Bullet tore through his chest. Inozuka Jiro collapsed to the floor with a thud, his face frozen in shock. He had never imagined that this model, whom he still regarded as