Romantic Troubles of Duanmu-kun

To the novelist, a series of puzzles constructed around the deaths of others was incredibly dull; moreover, the final answer had been clear from the beginning. No matter how this woman before him tried to conceal the truth afterward, her crude deception techniques were amateurish at best.
—The answer was “hospital.”
The culprit was definitely hiding within the hospital, with a considerable number of accomplices.

In the third mass incident after Sudou Rika’s death, the puzzle lay in how the three victims had entered the private car that served as the suicide scene.
Security cameras monitored the areas from outside to the underground garage, from the shopping mall to the underground garage, and within the parking lot itself. Yet the three victims never appeared in the footage, and the recordings had neither been modified nor interrupted.

The only possibility seemed to be that they had been placed in the private car beforehand. However, during questioning, the police discovered that the car owner was an ordinary person who knew nothing about this and had no reason to assist in a suicide. The owner had checked the car and trunk before departing that day and found no one hiding inside. The footage showed no one in the passenger or back seats when the car entered the garage, and the trunk was too small to fit three high school students.

It sounded like a baffling, unsolvable mystery with contradictory premises. But considering the social resources that the “mastermind” might have utilized in planning this series of suicide events, the novelist had already formed his suspicions based on the revealed information.

Perhaps Asami-senpai had arrived at the answer the moment she noticed something unusual in the footage! Since logical reasoning couldn’t lead to a reasonable conclusion, the only remaining possibility was…
“The premise itself is flawed.”

In other words, those three high school students never entered the “scene” at all. They didn’t actually die by charcoal burning suicide in the private car. The scene discovered by the police was staged afterward.

And the so-called “first witness” wasn’t truly that at all. Due to the window tint, he hadn’t clearly seen what was inside. This person had chosen to first contact the security guard on duty and his supervisor, then called a nearby hospital for emergency assistance. After medical personnel transported the people inside to the hospital for resuscitation, the police arrived and completely sealed off the scene.

Throughout this process, the witness himself never saw the true forms of the three deceased; the hidden truth behind the scenes wasn’t even an “elaborate trick” but a mere “sleight of hand”—

The real “first witnesses” were actually the medical personnel who arrived afterward and opened the car door. The only people who could enter the scene before the police arrived without arousing suspicion—and who could even use an ambulance pre-loaded with three corpses as cover from surveillance cameras while methodically staging a false suicide scene—could only be them. With their medical knowledge and techniques, even the police technical department couldn’t immediately detect anything unusual.

As for the corpses of the three supposed suicide victims, they had naturally been tampered with before being brought to the scene. Whether their deaths were “murder” or “suicide” remained unknown… though the former seemed more likely, as the members of the “Mystery Novel Research Club” had been missing for several days before their bodies were discovered.

Perhaps these people had discovered some secrets about the “mastermind” and were silenced.

As mentioned earlier, the hospital closest to Sun Plaza was none other than the “Asayama Private General Hospital” where Shirakawa Keigo had once worked.

Furthermore, the members of the suicide cult that nearly caused a tragic mass jumping incident, and the girl who died at Yuihara Private High School—all these girls with peculiar mental states shared a common point.
—They had all been hospitalized at this facility.

Ohashi Kazuko had been brought here for treatment and recovery after excessive blood loss from cutting her wrists; the sole female survivor of the “suicide wave” had likewise been hospitalized here. During their stays, they had been indoctrinated and brainwashed by someone using this place as a base of operations.

Ohashi Kazuko’s abnormal behavior on the rooftop of Harumida Girls’ High School served as further evidence. She had clearly been given or injected with drugs that caused hallucinations and paralyzed nerves. Although at the time, Asami-senpai had informed the police that their next action would be to “investigate the sale of prohibited substances by nearby yakuza and underground organizations,” that was merely to avoid drawing attention from someone hidden within the police.

There existed a safer and more convenient channel for obtaining such drugs without arousing suspicion—the hospital.

In short, before the novelist arrived here, all clues pointed to this place. But due to insufficient grounds and uncertainty about the mastermind’s specific identity, Asami-senpai was hindered by forces within the police department and couldn’t deploy significant manpower to search a reputable, properly operating hospital.

Of course, the detective lady wouldn’t easily give up. She unhesitatingly took a more arduous path, comparing related cases in past records to find decisive clues. Concerned about alerting the enemy, she completed this complex and enormous task alone, without sleep or rest, in just three days.

The novelist now clearly understood Asami-senpai’s thoughts and resolve, which was why he stood here as her assistant.

However.
He hadn’t expected that the cause of the “suicide wave” would be connected to himself.

The “Kurayama Psychiatric Hospital Mass Suicide Incident in North Kyushu,” which Asami-senpai had identified as extremely similar in nature to the “suicide wave,” had been orchestrated by the “Brainwasher” whom the novelist had encountered during the previous serial killer incident in Nagawa City.

This was somewhat unexpected.

This woman before him—the mastermind who had organized multiple mass suicide incidents and caused social unrest and panic, a former close colleague of the Brainwasher—how would she react upon hearing “I killed Shirakawa Keigo”?

The novelist wasn’t certain of her motives. Perhaps they were related to the Brainwasher’s death, or possibly driven purely by her own twisted psychology…

But none of that mattered.

She had indeed inherited the “Brainwasher’s” legacy and continued the cruel thought experiments in this city. Therefore—
From now on, she would be able to do nothing at all.

“You said… you killed him?”
The female doctor raised her head, her eyes vacant.