Yukinoshita's Correction Method

Sasaki answered now and then with perfunctory noises—mm, yeah, oh, uh-huh—his reaction so flat he was like the straight man at a comedy show who had been dragged onstage to play along.

As they talked, the two of them had already left the special building and walked somewhere a little farther away.

Tanaka tentatively steered the topic toward Sasaki's girlfriend. Seeing that Sasaki did not react too strongly, his questions gradually grew bolder.

Then came the scene they had seen at the beginning: Sasaki pushed the camera away, and Tanaka discovered the twisted blue smiling face between the branches outside the special building.

Sasaki fled with Tanaka, and the footage ended.

"Tanaka came to school to reshoot some shots, ran into Miki, filmed for a while, then went upstairs and saw Hojo and Miki from the Film Research Club. He went to the prop room to ask Sasaki for help. The two of them filmed with the props for a while, went upstairs once to change props, then Sasaki returned to the prop room first. Tanaka felt uneasy and followed him, and in the end the two left together and filmed the blue foreign object." Yukino Yukinoshita gave a simple summary, then looked at Komachi Hikigaya. "And you want to know what that thing was, and who put it there for what purpose, right?"

"No." Before Komachi Hikigaya could speak, Dong Yunshan spoke first. "Komachi wants to get rid of Tanaka's fear."

"Mm-hmm." Komachi Hikigaya nodded. "That's right."

"So," Yukino Yukinoshita crossed her right hand in front of her chest, supporting her left elbow, her left hand loosely clenched into a fist as her index finger bent and lightly touched her pale, delicate chin, "all we need to do is figure out what that thing was, and who put it there for what purpose."

Dong Yunshan sighed helplessly. "That's not..."

"Hm? Is there any difference?" Yui Yuigahama looked left and right in confusion. Noticing Dong Yunshan's troubled expression, she suddenly realized something. "Ah! Dong Yun, you already know what's going on, don't you?"

This girl's ability to read people was seriously impressive.

"Let me say this first. I only have a vague guess, and that doesn't mean it's the only truth." Dong Yunshan clicked his tongue. "The problem is, according to what Komachi said, Tanaka was scared out of his mind, Sasaki got dumped, Miki has a gentle personality, and Hojo is busy drawing, so none of them are easy to approach and investigate. Right now, all we can do is make wild guesses based on the information we already have. If we guess wrong, it's useless. If we guess right... that's not exactly good either."

"You mean... your guess would hurt someone?" Yui Yuigahama blinked. "If you have a guess, you can verify it indirectly, right? In a way that doesn't hurt anyone."

"If the truth hurts people," Yukino Yukinoshita took out a notebook, "then lies won't save anyone either."

She wrote down several names:

Tanaka—filming, editing, post-production; witness

Miki—actress; Hojo's childhood friend

Hojo—club president and director; Miki's childhood friend; poster artist

Sasaki—prop master; poster artist

"At this hour, very few people stayed at school." Yukino Yukinoshita drew a circle around the last three names. "The culprit should be among them."

"There's also Sasaki's girlfriend." Yui Yuigahama reminded her, then looked at Komachi Hikigaya. "Oh, right, what about you, Komachi?"

Komachi Hikigaya stuck out her tongue. "I'm the scriptwriter. I could handle it at home, and I finished it ages ago."

"You must have been thinking about it for a long time too." Dong Yunshan lightly pinched his cola can. "Komachi, who do you feel it was?"

Yukino Yukinoshita's gaze was icy, and her voice was even colder. "Are you starting to construct a lie already?"

Dong Yunshan avoided Yukino Yukinoshita's gaze. "Just asking."

"I feel..." Komachi Hikigaya thought for a moment. "It should be Sasaki's girlfriend."

"Mm." Dong Yunshan nodded. "Someone outside the club."

"I don't want to suspect anyone in the club, so that's the only way." Komachi Hikigaya smiled awkwardly. "I only heard from other people a while ago that Sasaki had a girlfriend. They should have been madly in love, wanting to happily go on dates together every day... but because of filming, Sasaki was always busy, and he even had his girlfriend come over to help."

"That makes sense." Dong Yunshan followed Komachi Hikigaya's line of thought. "Because they had very little time together, his girlfriend grew dissatisfied, so she wrapped a piece of foam in blue cloth and hung it outside, deliberately scaring Tanaka to vent her anger."

"But..." Yui Yuigahama raised a question. "Why scare Tanaka?"

"Because he interrupted their happy time." Dong Yunshan pointed at the handheld console. "Wasn't Sasaki's shirt really messy?"

Yukino Yukinoshita's gaze turned unfriendly. She was clearly very displeased with Dong Yunshan's attempt to follow Komachi Hikigaya's guess and make the lie sound reasonable. "Then why did they break up?"

"Because after Sasaki left, Miki went to the prop room again, and then just happened to run into Sasaki's girlfriend." Dong Yunshan adjusted the video's progress. "Though I don't know the specific reason, neither Sasaki nor his girlfriend wanted anyone to know, so after they were discovered, they simply broke up."

For example, there was Tanaka's guess that Sasaki's girlfriend was a teacher.

"The round window on the prop room door was covered. Sasaki's girlfriend could have braced the door from inside and kept Miki from entering without exposing her identity. Or she could have simply spoken from inside and told Miki not to come in." Yukino Yukinoshita narrowed her eyes slightly. "It isn't difficult to disguise one's original voice. Your lie doesn't make sense."

"Ah... true." Dong Yunshan spoke pointedly. "People's voices are very changeable. Sometimes they can even make sounds they themselves find unbelievable."

Yukino Yukinoshita: "..."

P.S. Thank you to [Solo Stanning Yukino Yukinoshita] for the tip!

With everyone's votes supporting it, this book has already climbed to 77th on the new book rankings!

Only one vote behind the one ahead!

For the reader group, you can search for past works:

Demon Slayer: Weeping

How to Raise a Passerby Wife

Exorcising Demons with Kikyo

Club Activities: Eliminating Them One by One

"Huh?"

Yui Yuigahama seemed to have thought of something. She suddenly began adjusting the progress bar, and the image on the screen finally froze on Sasaki's extremely gloomy expression as he looked up at the third floor.

"Look..." Yui Yuigahama adjusted the progress bar a little farther back. "If you only look at this silhouette, you can't tell who it is at all, right?"

"At this distance, being able to see someone moving inside is already pretty difficult." Komachi Hikigaya looked carefully. "And what's moving probably isn't a person, but someone inside moving the Blue Demon model. After all, there were a lot of them piled up in there."

"I've never even seen his girlfriend..." Komachi Hikigaya thought for a moment. "But his girlfriend often came to help. If his girlfriend was the one who touched it, then he shouldn't have gotten angry."

"So... what he was angry about was that someone else had entered the prop room," Yui Yuigahama murmured. "But from downstairs, there was no way to tell who had touched it. Yet when he saw someone had moved the prop, he judged that someone else had gone into the prop room."

"You mean..." Komachi Hikigaya's eyes widened. "He was certain his girlfriend couldn't move, so the moment he saw movement in the prop room, he immediately realized someone else had gone in. That was why his expression turned so ugly."

"But why wouldn't his girlfriend be able to move..." Yui Yuigahama pondered, her eyes darting around before suddenly stopping on Dong Yunshan. "Ah, just like Dong Yun!"

Dong Yunshan: "What do you mean, just like me?"

"Hobbies! Sasaki's girlfriend had the same hobby as you." Yui Yuigahama mimed tightening a rope. "So his girlfriend couldn't move, and she couldn't make a sound to stop Miki from entering the prop room."

"What do you mean, the same hobby as me?" Dong Yunshan protested unhappily. "What special hobbies do I have? And isn't your knowledge a little too extensive?"

"I..." Yui Yuigahama's face flushed bright red. "I heard it from a friend..."

"But if that really was the case?" Komachi Hikigaya's face also reddened at the thought of that possibility. "Why didn't Sasaki lock the door?"

"For the thrill!" Yui Yuigahama clapped her hands. "Now we've found the reason for the breakup too. It was because Sasaki didn't lock the door!"

Even Sasaki's girlfriend taking revenge on Tanaka made sense now.

Dong Yunshan: "Your knowledge is a bit too extensive."

"I heard it from a friend..." Yui Yuigahama turned her head away. "Critically..."

Learning good things was hard; learning bad things was a slippery slope.

"After something so serious happened," Yukino Yukinoshita asked expressionlessly, "Sasaki still went downstairs with Tanaka to film?"

"Oh, right." Komachi Hikigaya realized it too. "At a time like that, he should have gone to comfort his girlfriend."

"Don't get tunnel vision. We haven't confirmed that Sasaki's girlfriend did it." Dong Yunshan reminded them, "It could still have been someone else."

"Then... Miki?" Yui Yuigahama thought of a possibility. "None of you have ever seen Sasaki's girlfriend, right? It's very possible it was Miki, and then Tanaka almost discovered her..."

"When Tanaka went upstairs, Miki was in the Film Research Club." Komachi Hikigaya shook her head. "She couldn't have teleported to the prop room in an instant, could she?"

"Hmm... Then it could still have been Miki." Yui Yuigahama picked up the poster. "Miki liked Hojo and wanted to support Hojo's new poster. But Hojo kept failing to draw a new poster, so to buy Hojo time, Miki took the key to the prop room, hung the Blue Demon model outside to scare Tanaka, and delayed progress."

"But Hojo would have noticed that." Komachi Hikigaya adjusted the progress bar to the point where the blue object had been filmed. "This thing was outside the Film Research Club's window. To be exact, it was a little below the window. Although you couldn't see it from inside the Film Research Club when it was hanging there, when it was thrown down from the prop room, it would be visible from inside the Film Research Club."

"Not necessarily." Dong Yunshan dug a rope out from the pile of miscellaneous items at the back of the clubroom and tied a book to the end. "As long as you threw it sideways like this."

The book at the end of the rope flew horizontally for some distance, then swung in an arc around the rope, swaying slightly back and forth before finally coming to a stop.

Dong Yunshan pointed at the fan-shaped area traced by the rope. "As long as you control the length of the rope so that this fan shape includes the Film Research Club's window, you can ensure that the people inside the Film Research Club won't see the blue object."

Komachi Hikigaya flicked the rope. "But the rope would still be seen. Even if it was fishing line, people would notice it swaying around."

"I know this one!" Yui Yuigahama skillfully adjusted the progress bar on the handheld console's video playback. "Look, the curtains in the Film Research Club were partly drawn."

It seemed Hojo had lowered some of the curtains in the clubroom to create a gloomy atmosphere in search of inspiration.

Although a large object passing by would still cast an obvious shadow on the curtains.

The swaying of fishing line definitely would not be noticed by the people in the Film Research Club.

"Could it really have been Miki?" Yui Yuigahama lightly bit her lower lip. "Her personality is so good. How could she..."

"The recovery problem." Yukino Yukinoshita lightly tapped her notebook with the tip of her pen. While Dong Yunshan was demonstrating, she had already finished drawing a diagram. "If Miki did it from the third floor, she would need to consider how to retrieve it. She could use Dong Yun's method when lowering it, but not when retrieving it. During the process of pulling it back up, Hojo inside the Film Research Club would still notice."

"Couldn't she just leave it hanging there?" Yui Yuigahama tilted her head. "Then go back later to retrieve it."

"Miki and Hojo were childhood friends. They always left school together, so even if she said halfway that she had forgotten something, Hojo would come back with her." Komachi Hikigaya paused. "And you'd also have to consider the possibility of Tanaka or Sasaki coming over to check."

Then she would be caught red-handed.

"So the only person left who had time to quickly lower and retrieve it, and also had a motive, was Hojo," Yui Yuigahama murmured. "And he also had the Blue Demon model. As long as he sent Miki away for a while, he could complete the entire process."

"Whether it was Miki or Hojo, they were both doing it to scare Tanaka." Yukino Yukinoshita closed her notebook. "But how could they be certain that doing this would definitely scare Tanaka?"

"Taking a chance?" Even Yui Yuigahama herself felt that answer was unreliable as she said it. "The only person who could control the direction of Tanaka's camera, aside from Tanaka himself, was... Sasaki!"

"Dong Yunshan," Yukino Yukinoshita said in a clear voice, "are you still going to keep hiding it?"

Dong Yunshan irritably scratched his hair. "I only combined my... friend's experience with the information we have so far and came up with a guess, that's all."

"Everyone has been offering guesses," Yukino Yukinoshita said, brushing back her long hair. "Or do you think your guess is the unquestionable truth?"

"Fine." Dong Yunshan let out a long breath. "I..."

"You have a friend," Yukino Yukinoshita cut in expressionlessly. "For convenience's sake, let's first assume that this friend of yours is you."

"This time it really was a friend of mine." Dong Yunshan's gaze was complicated. "One Christmas, this friend's roommate went out on a date, leaving me... leaving my friend alone in the room."

"You should just pretend this friend is you," Yui Yuigahama suggested. "That way it'll be easier for you to say it, and easier for us to listen. We'll just treat it as if this friend isn't you."

"It wasn't me to begin with..." Dong Yunshan cleared his throat. "I'll tell it in first person, then. That Christmas, I turned on the bathroom light and turned on the hot water. The bathroom filled with steam and glowed with light, like a miracle appearing.

"I was in a room across the living room, browsing the internet and making posts, pretending I was waiting for a woman to finish her shower and come out to keep me company.

"But in reality, I was the one who had turned on the water. There was no one in the bathroom.

"My roommate came back with a girl. He looked at the bathroom in surprise and asked me if I'd brought a girl home.

"I should have been honest, but the truth was too pathetic.

"So I said yes, I'd brought a girl home.

"My roommate patted my shoulder, gave me a knowing smile, and slipped into his room with his girlfriend.

"After that, my roommate told people I had a girlfriend.

"When people asked me if it was true, "I could only say yes. I couldn't tell them I was the one who'd turned on the water, and that there was no one in the bathroom.

"So I went through a troublesome period.

"I couldn't join the bachelors' after-work activities anymore, because they'd heard I had a girlfriend.

"The people around me were curious about my girlfriend and wanted to meet her.

"But I didn't have a girlfriend. I was the one who'd turned on the water, and there was no one in the bathroom.

"I kept making excuses, and they thought we'd had a fight, so they told me to buy her some gifts.

"Some cute little presents, and lipsticks in shades I couldn't tell apart.

"My girlfriend would definitely have been happy to receive them, if I'd had one.

"To keep people from getting suspicious, I even bought sanitary pads, opened them, and put them in my room, pretending there was someone who needed them.

"As if I needed someone like that to exist.

"Little by little, everyone believed I had a girlfriend.

"No one knew I was the one who'd turned on the water, and that there was no one in the bathroom."

"This was my... a friend's personal experience." Dong Yunshan let out a long breath. "So when I heard Sasaki had a girlfriend, but no one had ever seen her, my first reaction was—what happened to you guys?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't think..." Yui Yuigahama sniffled. "Dong Yun, actually, there are a lot of girls who like your type."