Mizunashi Rena's New Job (Part 2)

The next day, deep in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture.

A short-haired girl dressed like a tourist, wearing hiking clothes and hunter boots, stood alone against a massive boulder at the mountaintop. She looked down over the endless sea of trees below, as though quietly waiting for something.

She was Koshimizu Natsuki.

Once a high school detective, now a murderer-in-waiting.

It all had to do with the Lavender House Locked-Room Murder Case a year ago.

Lavender House was a famous country villa in Shikoku, owned by a wealthy local family.

One of Koshimizu Natsuki's friends had worked as a maid for that family.

Later, the family's eldest daughter had shut herself in her bedroom and committed suicide for personal reasons—

It should have been an ordinary suicide case.

The police had initially concluded that the deceased had died by suicide.

But because of some reckless analysis from a high school detective assisting the police with the case,

that simple suicide case had been forcibly turned into a "locked-room murder case."

And Koshimizu Natsuki's friend, that young maid, had unjustly become the police's murder suspect.

Unable to clear her name, she fell into despair and depression, and tragically chose to end her own life.

Koshimizu Natsuki had lost a dear friend because of it.

And after investigating the matter herself, she had confirmed that it was simply an ordinary suicide case.

Her friend had been innocent. The locked-room murder method that "great detective" had carelessly deduced had never been viable to begin with.

What was worse—

Koshimizu Natsuki had found extremely obvious evidence at the scene. One look was enough to confirm that it had not been a locked-room murder.

She refused to believe that "great detective" could have missed that evidence.

Which meant that irresponsible bastard had most likely known