Two Friends (1)

The criminal hid his trembling hands behind his back as Katya’s reasoning saw through his situation.

The fear of being found out was tightening its grip on his throat.

Please, he prayed, prayed to the gods he didn’t believe in, that she would draw a different conclusion.

“The killer couldn’t have gone out into the hallway, because there’s a staircase right next to line nine, and he’d run into whoever was following him on the way out, so the cornered killer’s choice was–”

But the gods did not grant the killer’s wish this time.

“His plan was to run downstairs, to room 408, which is right downstairs, and he would have normally tried to use a rope or a string to get down to safety, but the situation was so urgent that he didn’t have time for that, so he just jumped down.”

The hotel was built before the latest architectural trend of high ceilings.

As a result, the ceilings were lower than in other hotels, and the gaps between floors weren’t as far apart, allowing an adult woman to jump as long as she was athletic enough.

With all eyes on her, the killer kept his head down and looked away.

Katya looked him in the eye and parted her lips.

“Judith, that’s when you hurt your ankle, isn’t it?”

Judith, who had been frowning at her sore ankle, looked up.

Katya was right.

Returning to the balcony of her room, she took off her robe, threw it into the river, and limped back inside, not even bothering to look at her injured ankle.

Then, still in her nightgown, she climbed onto the bed, put on the earplugs and eye patch she’d found on the nightstand, rolled over and pulled the covers over her head, pretending to sleep.

She hadn’t managed to kill Viscountess Borodin, but she had hidden herself for the time being and decided to wait for another time.

She’d made a mistake, but she was confident she wouldn’t get caught.

But there was no such thing as a perfect crime.

Even the most perfect crimes are eventually discovered.

Punishment would find its owner, even if it was slow.

“What do you mean, are you accusing me of the crime?”

Judith snorted in disbelief.

“Just because I happened to sprain my ankle?”

“…….”

“Well, I can understand giving some leeway when it comes to what happened to the Headmistress. But it’s simply absurd to claim that I killed the Baron! When the Baron returned to his room, we were all clearly together in the dining hall.”

“You had plenty of opportunity.”

“You mean when the lights went out in the dining room in the middle of the night? They came back on in the blink of an eye, and how did I manage to get up to the fifth floor and back down again? Are you saying I used magic?”

According to the Hersen constitution, wizards, even if they were foreigners, were required to have their identification cards marked as such.

But Judith wasn’t a wizard.

She just happened to be smarter than everyone else.

“The first crime was much simpler than the second. You just had to poison the baron’s handkerchief beforehand.”

“What, what did you say?”

“You must have known that Baron Lanzkoi is right-handed, so he uses the handkerchief in his left pocket that he can reach first. Just as you said, he used two of the handkerchiefs on his left before coming to the hotel, and the last one in the restaurant.”

“…….”

“And when he came up here, he put his hand in his left pocket, as was his habit, and when he found no handkerchief inside, he took out the one that was on his right. Probably all three of the right handkerchiefs were poisoned.”

Going to his room to change, the baron locked the door behind him and stepped inside.

He had a cold, and before he could change, he felt his nose tickle.

He sneezed and grabbed a handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth, and as he tossed it in the trash, he fell flat on his face in pain.

For a moment, he tried to vomit, thinking that the food he had eaten had been poisoned.

But the handkerchief spread the poison, which had already entered his bronchial tubes, and he died.

“Since the poison was inhaled through his hand, it’s a case of clandestine murder. The Baron was a mysophobe and wouldn’t use a handkerchief that didn’t belong to him, so it would have been difficult for someone to switch it in the middle. The only person who could have done this is you, who prepared his handkerchief in the first place.”

Finding the handkerchief in the trash, Katya noticed that the color was subtly different from the one he had used in the restaurant.

For some reason, the rest of the handkerchiefs that came out of his right pocket were the same color as the last one he must have used.

It was a small question that led to the leak of the poisoned discoloration.

Judith laughed hysterically at the thought that it was all over.

“How dare you!”

Viscountess Borodin, finally free of her paralysis, screamed and lunged at the student who had tried to kill her.

If Mengano hadn’t restrained her, she would have raked her nails across Judith’s face.

Katya’s deduction didn’t end there.

The most important thing in a criminal case is the motive.

People sometimes feel the urge to kill someone, but it usually stops at the thought.

They need a clear motive to act on it.

What was the motive behind Judith’s murder?

“Baron Lanzkoi said he rented room 504 every year. Of all the rooms, why would he rent the one directly above 404, which was said to be haunted? Even if he preferred that room, he would change it if he heard that someone had committed suicide downstairs.”

And why had Viscountess Borodin so casually walked in as if she was the owner of room 404?

The two men and women that Judith was trying to kill seemed to have no qualms about being in the dreaded Room 404.

The Viscountess protested to the manager, asking how he could give them a room that was haunted, but in fact, she walked in and out of the room without a care in the world.

Her behavior was contradictory.

As if she didn’t want anyone else in the room.

When the evil spirit appeared, Viscountess Borodin didn’t run away like most people would, but walked right up to it and took the bait.

“Does this have anything to do with the woman who died in room 404 and became an evil spirit?”

That’s the only way to explain these bizarre spots.

Tears filled Judith’s unfocused eyes.

“Yes. I was a friend of that poor child who was driven to her death by those two devilish humans.”

She recalled a day filled with regret.

It still seems like yesterday, a time she can never get back.

***

As a student at the Molniski Ladies’ Academy, Judith entered as a commoner scholarship student, but she was so brilliant that she outperformed her noble peers to become the head of her class.

Her graceful demeanor endeared her to everyone, including the headmistress, Viscountess Borodin.

Teachers encouraged her to apply for a position as a tutor, and friends and former pupils alike offered to write letters of recommendation if she became a tutor.

But she really wanted to be a painter.

So she stayed in the classroom after school and painted on a blank canvas.

She also taught art at the Molniski Ladies’ Academy, but only to develop an eye for painting.

The school itself was designed to train mistresses for families, so naturally it was limited to art history classes, not hands-on practice.

The ability to publish paintings with their name on them was also limited to men.

“But why do you want to be a painter?”

Judith’s roommate and best friend from school asked one day.

“I want to, but I don’t really have a reason. My heart just beats for no reason. Isn’t that what dreams are for?”

“Heart is racing? Then I don’t think I have a dream.”

“What do you want to do when you graduate?”

“Just meet and marry the son of a wealthy merchant. Not all the commoner students here are smarter than most noble ladies like you.”

As noble families with daughters favored female tutors, the government increased the number of commoner scholarships at the Molniski Ladies’ Academy to meet the demand.

This made it possible for a small number of commoner girls to pursue higher education.

Although all of them were flying and crawling in their neighborhoods, once they entered the school, they couldn’t help but feel the gap in knowledge.

They couldn’t compete with the aristocrats who had been exposed to books and tutors since childhood.

That’s why Judith was so much better.

“But I’m not really good at painting. It’s a tragedy that what I’m good at doesn’t match what I want to do.”

“At least you’re good at something. I’m not good at anything, and I have no dreams.”

“Someday you’ll do something that makes your heart sing.”

“Will it? I think about it sometimes. When the gods made me, they must have left something out, and made me haphazardly.”

“I should charge you with blasphemy, you!”

Judith hugged her friend from behind and began tickling her belly.

“Kyaa, won’t you get off me?”

The two friends giggled and tumbled off the bed.

When Judith stayed in the classroom after school to draw, her friend waited by her side instead of going back to her room first.

When her friend got bored, Judith gave her a sketch to doodle on.

While she was concentrating hard on her drawing, her friend was also drawing something, but Judith couldn’t see what it was because she was embarrassed and hid it.

It wasn’t until later that she saw her friend’s work.

It was a day when the famous painter Lanzkoi, an adjunct professor at the Hersian National Academy, came to give a guest lecture at the Molniski Ladies’ Academy.