５．Ｓａｔｕｒｄａｙ　Ｍａｒｃｈ　９，　２０１９

"When you all arrived at the house," Maruta changed the topic. "Of course you went inside. Can you tell us what it was like there, or how you all spent your time inside?"

"It was fun at first." said 〈Shaggy〉, "The area around the house was, as I just said, dirty and disgusting. But it was surprisingly clean inside, so we had a rather comfortable stay. Kirvy and Mont Blanc, for example, were wrestling with gusto. The mosquitoes were so depressing that we had to spray to kill them."

"Right," 〈Kirvy〉 also opened his mouth. "Silva-san got angry when he saw us getting excited." 〈Kirvy〉 had a slight smile on his face as he said this.

"So," said 〈Shaggy〉 again, "After entering the middle room through the door right after the front door, we were ready to shoot. Then we left our stuff in the room on the left and immediately drove to go shopping. Number 4 was asked to stay behind. See, we were going to stay overnight in the middle of nowhere, so we needed water, food, and all sorts of other things. The four of us went down to town once more..."

"May I have a moment?" Again, Maruta's question arises here. "What was Silva-san doing at the time?"
"Hmm, editing." 〈Shaggy〉 immediately responded. "He said something like, 'I have a lot of editing work that needs to be done,' and after setting up the camera for the shoot in the middle room, he pulled himself into the room to the right. We don't know what happened after that."

I don't want this to be settled as a 'rough explanation'. It is arguably the most important point of today's meeting. Maruta was still fighting back against 〈Shaggy〉, who was about to abandon him.
"Did Silva-san lock himself in his room?"
"Yes."
While 〈Shaggy〉 was saying, Maruta placed the drawing in front of the sofa where the three of them were sitting.
"I am afraid that this question has been asked from various quarters, including the press, but Silva-san was found dead in the room on the right side of the room, wasn't he?"【a of Fig.3】

"Yes." 〈Shaggy〉 answered, but the other two members remained silent. Maruta continues.
"At some point after 5:00 p.m., Silva-san locked himself in his room for several hours alone. When you all somehow entered the room on the right, you found him in a dead state."
Maruta paused for a moment, but when no one spoke, he ventured to get to the heart of the matter.

"This is a locked-room murder."
Maruta regretted this the moment he said it. It was clear that not even a person there welcomed this statement. He wondered if breathing the freezing air in the room would cause frostbite in his throat.

"It was beyond astonishing," 〈Kirvy〉 officiated the occasion. "When we came back from shopping, Silva-san was still locked in his room, which we thought was strange. But we didn't care, we just ate the food we had bought. It was about 8 p.m., he hadn't come out yet, so we called out to him, who was in the room. Still, Silva-san did not answer, so we all began to think that this was indeed strange. So, when we forced the door down, we found,"

At this point, 〈Shaggy〉 extended his arm from the side, forcing the large man to stop talking. "What is your point, Maruta-san?"
Maruta momentarily almost turned his head toward Kira, but did not. He had developed a certain tolerance for 〈Shaggy〉's penetrating gaze.

"I thought to myself, this is like paranormal. I simply want to know what the hell happened after Silva-san entered the room and locked the door."
"Nothing happened," 〈Shaggy〉's behavior was no different than it had been before. "As you just heard, after Silva-san went into the room, he never came out. He was too slow to come out, so we broke down the door ourselves. Then we saw him lying inside, not breathing. Other than that, we didn't see anything unusual there. Maruta-san, you want to ask us this, 'Was the window of the right room also locked when the body was found?' Well..."

Of course, 〈Shaggy〉 just asked this 'question' on his own. However, not pointing this out, Maruta continued to listen.
"How was it, Kirvy?" 〈Shaggy〉 turned to the side.
"The window was..." Saying this, 〈Kirvy〉 made a show of thinking, then shortly thereafter, 〈Shaggy〉, perhaps to avoid any unnecessary pause, muttered, "Because there were mosquitoes flying around."
When 〈Kirvy〉 heard this, he said exactly what he remembered. "Yes, because there were mosquitoes flying around, we kept all the windows closed. Silva-san also said he didn't like mosquitoes, so he closed the window in his room so they wouldn't come in."

"Was the window locked when he was found?"
〈Shaggy〉 answers this Marta's question.
"As I recall, Captain went outside to check the windows before the door to the right room was destroyed. He may look like that, but he is our leader. At that time, that guy must have said, 'The window is locked from the inside.' Then, even before we rushed into the room, that guy checked the whole place for signs that someone had entered, including the lock on the window. The four of us were watching from the middle room, near the door."
"So there were no signs of anyone entering the right room at all?"
"No."

Reflecting on thier story so far about when the body was found, Maruta confirmed in his mind that there was no contradiction with the news reports. He then retrieved the handout he had placed there for all to see, and spoke up with a new question that had sprung up.
"What is this black painted door in the middle room?"【A of Fig.3】

"Oh, that." 〈Shaggy〉 scratched the back of his head with his index finger, a gesture Maruta had seen him make one day. "That door was also locked."
"So, you all didn't check what it looked like beyond that."
"No," 〈Shaggy〉's troublesome attitude remains unchanged. "That bothered us, but we only stayed there for a few hours. Besides, after we found Silva's body, of course, we couldn't care less about that, so we ended up not opening it."

After checking on 〈Shaggy〉's unwillingness to talk further, Maruta put the handout away in his bag, while casting an unfulfilled glance at it.

"And so, there's more." Maruta looked at them again with an apologetic air. Maruta wondered if the three of them would begin to show their dislike. But, having confirmed their still aloof attitude, he proceeded to talk further with them.
"I heard that after Silva's death was discovered, the house suddenly started burning."
Again, 〈Shaggy〉 answered. "When we saw Silva-san on the floor, we thought he wasn't dead yet. It's obvious. It's no surprise that we did. You wouldn't expect someone who was having the same conversation as usual just a few hours ago to suddenly die, would you? Before we even knew what had happened,"

"Suddenly, we saw fire outside the window." 〈Kirvy〉 entered the conversation, followed by 〈Shaggy〉, who continued the explanation.
"Yes. After the orange glow outside the right room, we suddenly began to smell a burning. I think they were Captain and Kirvy who carried Silva-san when things got very bad. Shortly after the other guys rushed out too, the fire started to spread to the front of the house. I don't know what would have happened to us if we'd been too late to escape then."

"I know it's a cliché to ask this now, but," said Maruta, "What was the cause of the fire?"
Exhaling a long breath of exasperation, 〈Shaggy〉 said. "I don't know at all. We smoked, but we didn't use any other source of fire. The fire started from the outside, not the inside to begin with."
"Are you saying that some unknown force was at work?"
"You could say that."

Maruta asks more questions, as if he might raise his hand. "Earlier, when I asked, 'this is like paranormal,' you, Shaggy-san said, 'Nothing happened.'"
Then, 〈Number 4〉, who had remained silent until this point, spoke up. "When the house caught fire, Captain and the others left the scene to call an ambulance and go down to the city. Around the crime scene, there was no cell phone reception. Me and Mont Blanc stayed there to check on Silva-san."

"I'm home, you guys!" With this voice, the tall 〈Captain〉 entered the room. The diminutive 〈Mont Blanc〉 followed close behind. The atmosphere of the place changed dramatically with the addition of the two.
"Hey, that's Yuya!" 〈Captain〉 looked as if he had found a plaything. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You're Yuya! Long time no see!" 〈Mont Blanc〉 said, pulling out an open-mouthed packet of chewing gums. "Yuya, do you want some gum? It's good."
Smiling affectionately, Kira touched one of the offered pastries. The next moment, yelling, "Ow!", Kira quickly withdrew his hand. When everyone at 〈Tokyo Spread〉 saw this, they laughed uncontrollably. From the sight of this, Maruta knew that it was not a gum or the like, but a classic toy that would conduct an electric current as soon as it was touched.

"Yes, Yuya." This time, 〈Captain〉 says without hesitation. "Want some curry? We have some leftover from yesterday."
Then 〈Shaggy〉 said, "He's already eaten,"
To which, 〈Captain〉 responded in a hushed voice, "Have you fed this guy yet?"
Even in between these exchanges, the taunts swirled.

"Do you want to watch the video of it?" 〈Shaggy〉 took up the handheld camera they had just used for the shoot.
"Yes, yes!" On the cue from 〈Captain〉, the members gathered around 〈Shaggy〉, who was holding the camera.
"Watch it to the end. There's a good ending." After 〈Shaggy〉 said this, there was a short pause. A few dozen seconds later, laughter broke out again. Even Maruta, who did not watch the video, could easily imagine at what point in the video they started laughing.

"Yuya! What are you really doing throwing up?" 〈Captain〉 exclaimed gleefully, belly-flopping and laughing all over the place.
〈Mont Blanc〉 also shouted loudly. "The moment, the moment we came in, I thought I smelled something... Yuya, you're the cause of it!"