Chapter 081: The Nightmare Clown

Why?

The searing pain jolted Yamada Akito awake in an instant. His eyes flew wide, staring in disbelief at Natsumi in his arms, only to meet a hideous, grotesque face.

From the girl’s eyes, two trails of blood-like tears slowly ran down her cheeks...

When Su Cheng and the others found Yamada Akito, Oshima was standing in a dazed stupor before the corpse, a bloodstained fruit knife clenched in his hand.

"Oshima, you killed Akito?"

Gizawa’s face changed color violently as he blurted the words out. Anyone who saw this scene would assume that Oshima had accidentally killed Yamada Akito during some conflict between them.

Hearing Gizawa’s voice, Oshima’s eyes cleared at once. When he saw the body on the ground, he trembled in fright and the fruit knife slipped from his hand and hit the floor.

"It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. Akito was already dead when I got here!"

Oshima was terrified. Only a few minutes earlier, he had chased Yamada Akito out to the garden, only to discover his body.

Yet after finding the corpse, he had not immediately gone to notify the others. Instead, as if possessed, he had stepped forward and taken the murder weapon from the body into his own hand.

Thus, that fruit knife, now bearing Oshima’s fingerprints, became crucial evidence that he had killed Yamada Akito.

"If that’s true, why was the weapon in your hand? And besides you, there was no one else here. Oshima, why did you kill him?" Sayaka was certain that Oshima was the murderer and demanded furiously.

Oshima had no way to defend himself. There was no one here except him—could Yamada Akito have killed himself?

At that moment, Su Cheng, who had not spoken until now, walked to the body and carefully examined the wound.

"Wait. The killer should not be Oshima," Su Cheng said, as if he had discovered something, a flash of light in his eyes. "From the angle at which the fruit knife entered, Yamada Akito should have been facing the killer in an embrace, and then stabbed from behind."

Sayaka imagined two men locked in an affectionate embrace, and a strange blush rose to her cheeks.

"No, maybe they were struggling and Oshima drove the fruit knife into his back," Gizawa still did not quite believe Oshima was innocent. They had not seen anyone else when they came over. If not him, then who else could the murderer be?

Su Cheng shook his head. "The wound is lower than it should be, which means the killer was shorter than Yamada."

If Akito had been hugging someone without suspicion, and that person was shorter, then the killer’s identity was already obvious.

Natsumi.

At the thought, Gizawa and Sayaka both went cold all over.

The killer was Natsumi, who was already dead. How could that be possible?

"To be precise, someone controlled Natsumi’s corpse, made her kill Yamada Akito, and then framed Oshima. In truth, this killing was simple enough. Once all the supernatural elements are stripped away, the culprit naturally emerges."

When Natsumi was murdered, Oshima and Yamada Akito had both been in the living room, and they had ample alibis.

At the time, the only people absent were Gizawa, Su Cheng, and Miyazaki Daisuke, who was still nowhere to be found.

From the beginning, Gizawa had stayed beside Su Cheng, with no chance to control a corpse and murder Yamada Akito. That left only one person.

Daisuke Miyazaki.

"You can come out now, Daisuke," Su Cheng said.

After a moment, the long-absent Miyazaki Daisuke walked out, his face dark with displeasure.

"Since when did you start suspecting me?" Miyazaki Daisuke fixed Su Cheng with a resentful stare. In order to clear himself of suspicion, he had gone to considerable lengths to disguise the deaths of Natsumi and Tomoko as suicides, and to pin Yamada Akito’s death on that fool Oshima. He had never imagined Su Cheng would still see through him in the end.

Su Cheng took a button from his pocket and held it before Miyazaki Daisuke’s eyes.

"I found this button on Tomoko’s body. It must have been torn from the killer’s clothes when she was murdered. At first, when I saw that a button was missing from Oshima’s coat, I suspected him. But later I noticed that the coat he was wearing was a bit too large. Among all of you, only you could fit that size. That coat must have been left in the living room by you, and Oshima simply put it on by mistake."

Miyazaki Daisuke’s face changed. He had never expected a single button to reveal the flaw in his scheme.

"Let me reconstruct the case. The first victim was Matsumura Tomoko. She must have been killed sometime after dinner, before everyone went into the living room to play games. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation due to violence. After killing Tomoko, you used some special method to control her corpse and staged a suicide right in front of us. You chose to slit her throat because you did not want anyone to notice the marks of strangulation on her neck."

Hearing Su Cheng’s explanation, Sayaka suddenly remembered that after dinner, Tomoko had gone to the restroom and taken a long time to return. Around that same time, Miyazaki Daisuke had also disappeared for a while, claiming he was going back to his room to get something.

Who could have imagined he had gone to kill someone?

"Then you somehow lured Natsumi upstairs to a room and killed her in the same way, disguising it as a suicide. Judging from the marks on her neck, you must have strangled her from behind with a rope and then hung her from the ceiling."

"Finally, you controlled Natsumi’s corpse to lead Yamada Akito here and kill him, pinning all the blame on Oshima."

Su Cheng’s deduction was not flawless, and some details differed from the facts, but it was close enough.

"Why? Daisuke, why did you kill them?" Seeing Miyazaki Daisuke’s expression, Gizawa and Sayaka knew the truth was probably just as Su Cheng had said. What they could not understand was why Miyazaki Daisuke, who held no real grudge against Tomoko and the others, would choose to kill, and with such cruelty.

Miyazaki Daisuke said nothing, but Su Cheng answered for him.

"Probably because of that car accident involving Senior Yui. At the time, Tomoko, Yamada Akito, and the others were in the same car as Senior Yui."

Su Cheng took a wallet from his person and drew out a photograph.

When Miyazaki Daisuke saw the woman in the picture, a tender light flashed in his eyes.

"But that accident was just an accident, wasn’t it?"

"An accident?" Miyazaki Daisuke gave a cold laugh, his face turning stormy at once. "If that crash was truly an accident, why was Senior Yui the only one injured and disfigured, while the rest of them came away untouched?"

Gizawa and Sayaka were startled by this.

"You mean the crash was not an accident?"

"Hmph. I only discovered this not long ago. Tomoko and Natsumi had stolen Yui’s photography work to sell it for money. After Senior Yui found out, they not only refused to repent, they even threatened her not to tell anyone. Yui would not yield to their demands, so they conspired with Yamada Akito to stage that crash."

Hatred flickered in Miyazaki Daisuke’s eyes. Because of that accident, the Senior Yui he adored had nearly taken her own life, and he would make those responsible pay.

"Those are only your guesses. The truth may not be what you think," Sayaka said in disbelief.

She could believe that Tomoko and Natsumi had stolen Senior Yui’s photography work to sell, but she could not believe these people had the nerve to stage a deadly car crash.

"Before I killed Tomoko, I already confirmed it. That cowardly woman only needed a little fright before she confessed everything about the crash."

In truth, Tomoko and Natsumi, together with Yamada Akito, had plotted the crash only to scare Senior Yui. They had never expected it to cause such terrible harm.

But once it happened, none of them had the courage to turn themselves in. They could only bury the truth in their hearts.

Miyazaki Daisuke learned of the matter because Yamada Akito let it slip one day when he was drunk.

The truth was laid bare.

As for who was right and who was wrong, Su Cheng made no further judgment. Yet Miyazaki Daisuke’s mental state seemed somewhat abnormal, and this case would not likely end so easily.

Just then, a crazed look appeared on Miyazaki Daisuke’s face.

"I never intended to deal with you, but since you learned the truth, you can stay here forever."

With that, he drew a sharp knife from his person and lunged forward with a ferocious snarl.

As long as he killed them all and made it look like the same suicide incident from three years ago, the truth would be buried forever.

The instant the screams rose, Su Cheng flashed forward and drove a hard punch into Miyazaki Daisuke’s jaw.

Even without a weapon, Su Cheng’s physical power made that blow impossible for an ordinary person to withstand.

Miyazaki Daisuke took the strike to the jaw, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed unconscious on the spot.

At that moment, a voice from the game sounded in his mind.

"You have successfully uncovered the plot. Main quest updating..."

Hearing the game’s voice, Su Cheng’s heart lurched. The game did not seem to be over yet.

He suddenly remembered one factor he had overlooked in his reasoning: where, exactly, had Miyazaki Daisuke’s supernatural power come from?

Instinct told him that behind Miyazaki Daisuke, there was still an unseen hand manipulating everything.

That person was the true culprit.

A strange black mist drifted in, and Gizawa and Sayaka, as though inhaling some narcotic vapor, collapsed one after another into unconsciousness and fell asleep.

Within the black mist, a playing card floated quietly in midair.

Inside the card, the clown wore a sinister and horrifying smile, staring at Su Cheng with mocking amusement.

"Who are you?"

At that moment, the restrictions upon Su Cheng vanished, and a pitch-black long blade appeared in his hand. Terrifying killing intent spread outward.

"You may call me the Nightmare Clown."

The clown in the card tore directly through the two-dimensional space and appeared before Su Cheng.