On the other side of campus, the rest of the Paranormal Club loiter, chatting to pass the time and to avoid suspicion. Katsuki checks her phone every other twenty seconds, anxious for any notification from the others.

“It seems they’re having trouble getting the Science club to let them in,” she grimaces, reading from her phone. “Seems Rina is to blame.”

Kirika scoffs, “Of course. I bet she did something stupid like try to break down their door without even knocking. Poor scientists are probably hiding under their desks, waiting for campus police to arrive!”

“Campus police? We don’t-” Yuuri pauses. “Anyway, it’s more than just Rina down there Kirika. Between Hotaru, Mari, and Yuudai, I’m sure they’ll come up with a good plan!”

“Hmm, what exactly are we looking for in there?” Kirie asks.

“Anything that would be incriminating,” Cerys answers almost instantly.

“And what exactly would that look like?” Saito follows up.

Kirie snaps her fingers, “Oh! Are we looking for panties?”

Cerys struggles for words, “What the...? No! We’re looking for anything that could’ve been used to attack Naomi with!”

There’s a loud thud that makes the group jump out of their skin.

Kirika shakes her head, “See! She can’t help herself! We’ll be picking her up from the stockades by the time the night is through!”

“She’s a moron, not a witch,” Cerys says, groaning.

Katsuki’s eyes grow wide, “That was them! Hotaru just said they went loud!”

“I figured this was going to be a bad idea.” Saito groans.

“Either way, we need to get moving now.” Cerys ushers her team on, “If that’s their entrance, they are going to have to deal with the cops.”

***

The gang walk towards the High Tier dorm rooms, reserved for only the best clubs at the school. Setting up behind some hedges across the way, the team are afforded a good line of sight to the Science clubroom. The door is, predictably, gone, Miku’s large frame obscuring who else might be inside.

“Y’know….” Cerys surveys the scene, “At least it’s only the door.”

Akina rolls her eyes, “Let’s just get inside before they do knock the whole building down.”

Cerys pulls a lockpick out of her jacket pocket and strolls to the door to the Idol dorm.

Yuuri puts her hand on Katsuki’s shoulder, “Be safe. Stay alert.”

Katsuki nods and watches as the rest make their way forward.

Cerys wordlessly opens the door and motions to the others as she slips in. The rest follow, using their phones as flashlights.

“Whatever you do, keep it away from the windows!” Saito warns.

The team finds themselves in the living room of the dorm. Behind that, they can make out a kitchen. A pair of hallways split off on the left and right sides.

“Wow... This is a whole lot better than our dorms.” Yuuri says, marveling at the interior design.

Cerys snaps her fingers. “Now’s not the time for that; we do this quick and clean.” She motions to Saito and Yuuri first, “You two check the kitchen,” She points to Kirie and Kirika, “And you two check the rooms on the left side. Akina and I will handle the right side rooms.”

Saito raises an eyebrow, “How...do you know this place so well?”

Cerys ignores him as she motions for Akina to follow. The remaining two pairs follow suit.

***

Kirie and Kirika trek down their assigned hallway quietly, stopping at the first door they come to. They look at each other and back at the door, neither really wanting to be the one to open it. Finally, Kirika snaps her fingers and Flopsy appears before them. She points to the door with a smile and a tilt of her head. He bows and nods, wasting no time in opening the door and ushering the two girls in.

What they find is a bathroom and a messy one at that. The floor is littered with wet towels and dirty clothes as dampness fills the air.

“Ugh… How can anyone live like this!?” Kirika says, face twisted with disgust.

Kirie begins rummaging through the clothes for anything.

“Eh? Are you crazy!? You don’t know what could be on those clothes!” Kirika protests, while Kirie continues undisturbed, eventually reaching into a pocket and pulling out a set of keys.

“A clue!” Kirie pockets her findings and goes back to work.

Kirika hesitantly pulls open a drawer under the sink. She stares into it briefly, then closes it again, “N-Nothing there! Let’s get Flopsy to go open the next room for us!”

The pair walk out but notice Flopsy is gone. They find the door at the end of the hall open and hear rustling from inside. Nervously, the girls creep to the door and peek in; they see Flopsy, the source of the noise, standing next to the bed with a shirt in his hands. He folds it neatly, nods in satisfaction, and lays it on the bed.

“Don’t touch that!” Kirika shouts, “You don’t have to pick up their clothing and fold it for them when they clearly can’t be bothered to!”

Kirie puts her hand over Kirika’s mouth and shushes her, “Quiet! Someone might hear us!”

The elf goes pale as she frantically rips Kirie’s hand off her face, “I hope you washed your hands before we left the bathroom!”

Kirie looks at her hands, unsure of how to break the news. All she can do is give her elf friend a double peace and a giggle.

“Y-You didn’t!” Kirika panics, “Who knows what kind of plague you’ve inflicted upon me!” She takes a deep breath, only for Kirie to cover her mouth again.

“You need to stay quiet! We’re going to get in trouble if you yell!”

Kirika gives up and whimpers into Kirie’s hand.

“Let’s start searching, okay?” Kirie smiles warmly as she pulls her hand away.

Kirika huffs and storms over to Flopsy. The servant produces a handkerchief and cleans her face off. Once satisfied, Kirika returns to Kirie.

“Do not touch my face again!”

Kirie salutes and the pair begin to search through the bedroom. They begin with a long dresser across from the beds; Kirie actively digs through each while Kirika just looks in and immediately closes it back up.

“Find anything over there Kirika?” Kirie asks, finishing up her last drawer.

“Just clothes…”

“Hmmm.” Kirie scans the room, “Maybe there are clues by the beds!”

“I am not touching their beds! You see how they treat their clothes!” Kirika pouts as she looks at Flopsy, “Why are you just standing there? You could help too!”

Flopsy stands aside and motions to the nightstand.

Kirika opens the lone drawer on it. She finds a hair straightener inside, the metal covered in a few brown splotches.

“Rustic!” Kirie exclaims.

“The term is “rusty”, and that’s dried blood, not rust.” She turns to Flopsy. “Did you know this was here the entire time and didn’t tell us!?”

He says nothing in return.

Kirie goes to grab it only for Kirika to knock her hand aside, “Don’t touch it! Your fingerprints will be the ones they find on it!”

“Let’s go find Yuuri then.” Kirie giggles her partner’s short temper off and leads her out of the room, “There’s gotta be something in the kitchen we can put this in!

“I do wish you would take this more seriously.” Kirika pouts.

***

Akina and Cerys have trashed their room searching. Clothes are strewn about, mattresses flipped around, and drawers left open. Cerys digs through a larger drawer on the other side of the room.

“How do you know this place so well?” Akina asks.

“I tutor Haruhiko, how else?”

“Are you two fucking already?”

Akina can’t see Cerys’ face but can see her ears have already turned a bright shade of red.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“No! I mean, I tried to get closer to him...but he’s really good at blowing off my advances.”

“He’s too delicate.” Akina says, “Especially for someone like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean-” Cerys opens another drawer, a cell phone screen inside it illuminates the dark room. “Hang on!”

“What do you have?”

Cerys flashes the phone at her, “I’ll find out in a second.”

Akina crosses her arms, “It’s probably locked.”

Cerys taps on the phone to find that it is indeed locked. She taps at the screen four times and the lock screen gives way to the homepage.

“Now it’s not.”

“How did you do that?” Akina asks.

“The password was all zeroes. Now, let’s see what’s hiding on here!”

Akina looks over Cerys’s shoulder. Both notice that the messaging app shows 89 unread messages.

“Who leaves that many messages unread?” Cerys wonders aloud.

She opens the app up and begins digging through messages. Almost all of the messages are addressed to a ‘Chiyan’, and nearly all of them begin by professing their love.

“Chiyan?” Akina tilts her head, “What’s a Chiyan?”

Cerys thinks, “Maybe it’s a nickname for Chiya...Guess we know who’s phone this is. But that means there could be a lot of evidence here!” She scrolls down further, trying to find any messages from the girl’s clubmates.

“Is that all Idols do?” Akina looks on in disgust, “Sing and get creepy fan mail from desperate losers?”

“Yeah probably, but shut up! I found her messages from Naomi!” Cerys scrolls down one more conversation, “Oh! A message from Haruhiko.”

She opens it to find just a single message from him.

“Chiya~ Make sure to lock up the attic after you’re done practicing!”

“Does he send texts like that to you?” Akina looks to Cerys, who doesn’t respond right away. She sighs, “What a weirdo.”

Cerys tosses the phone back into the drawer. “I’m going to find the attic. You keep looking for things in here.”

Akina nods as Cerys begins inspecting the ceiling. The silver-haired girl makes her way to the only door in the room and opens it, revealing a closet filled to the brim with colorful clothes. She pushes her way in and notices a box taped shut on the floor. Akina rips the top open with little effort.

The contents within smell charred and look a bit singed. She digs in and finds some rolled up outfits, still bright and vibrant beneath the charred top layer. Akina narrows her eyes and pulls some rolled up outfits out from the box to inspect. She unrolls the clothes, confirming her assumptions: these are costumes used in Yosakoi.

“That solves that.” Akina dumps the rest of the box out. She catches a glint of something clattering against the floor. She bends down and picks up a dumpy-looking digital recorder.

“The hell is this?” Akina stares at the device. The buttons read like gibberish to her. She digs her way back out the closest, “I found a…” She trails off as she realizes she’s talking to nobody.

Akina shakes her head and walks back out into the hallway, to an open door at the far end. It’s another bedroom, but this one looks completely different from the others. Two beds are situated normally, but the third one is shoved to the other side of the room. Akina finds Cerys sitting on the third bed, flipping through a notebook.

“What the hell are you doing? Akina snaps, “I thought you went looking for the attic?”

“I was!” Cerys says, “I came into this room and saw it was Haruhiko’s so I dug through his stuff and found a notebook!”

Akina rolls her eyes, “I take back what I said earlier. You’re the creep.”

Cerys pouts. “I’m not!” She holds up the notebook. “Besides, there’s something off about this book.”

Akina squints at the unintelligible writing, “I can’t read this.”

“It’s in English, but I’ve only seen how Haruhiko writes English.” Cerys goes back to flipping through the pages, “It’s messier than his English, but maybe he’s just flirting with me when he writes that. There’s a bunch of names in here with dates, I think. Must be his schedule, Eriri appears a lot so that would make sense.”

“Are you jealous?” She gives the shorter girl an uncharacteristic smirk “Let’s go back and I see what everyone else found,” Akina says.

***

Yuuri and Saito inspect the kitchen. Though they aren’t far from the living room, the two still have a hard time seeing much of anything even with the help of their cell phone lights. The two search in silence for several minutes

Yuuri breaks the silence. “Man, I really can’t wait to get our own kitchen like this once we move up in the ranks,” she says, in a hushed tone.

“S’long as the club can keep it clean,” Saito says.

“Hey, uh,” Yuuri inquires, “What clues should we… or I guess I… should be looking for?”

Saito looks behind the dishes. “Well, anything that looks suspicious or out of place, firstly.”

“Right, right,” Yuuri says. “Well, I don’t see anything out in the open so far.”

Saito doesn’t respond.

“...You find anything yet?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither.”

The air is heavy with suspense and awkwardness.

“You know, we haven’t really had much to talk about lately, huh?” Yuuri says.

Saito searches through some cupboards “Can’t really make small talk during a murder mystery.”

“I guess you’re right...” Yuuri rummages through the silverware drawer. “Actually, no. I’m not going to stay silent about all this.” She stops and looks at Saito. “I’m nervous about this attempted murder, or this breaking and entering and going through personal belongings. I need to do something.to release this tension.”

Saito crawls deeper into a cupboard. “I’d love to comfort you but the job comes first,”

Yuuri reaches for the fridge handle, “Agh, when you put it like that I feel really dumb for making this a big de-”

Before she can even lay a hand on it, she recoils away from the sound of another person walking into the kitchen. In a panic, she grabs the door and slightly opens it a crack. The ray of light flashes on their guest’s face, revealing some familiar short green bouncy hair.

“Kirie?”

“Yuuri!” Kirie exclaims with a wave.

Kirika nudges her slightly on the side. “Were you not the one telling me to be quiet just a minute ago?”

“Hey, you have your phone, you don’t need to open the fridge,” Saito says, backing out of the cupboard to see their two new guests, “Huh, are you two done already?”

“Have you two perused the kitchen and seen a freezer bag or something? We found a bloody object in the bedroom and I'm looking for something to store it into,” Kirie says with a smile.

“B-B-Blood?” Yuuri stammers, shutting the fridge door in the process, “Wh-Where did you find that?! We haven’t found anything in here yet!”

Saito moves to his feet with haste, “We need to see this right away. I think I saw a plastic baggie in another drawer earlier. We can grab that and head right over to the object.” He shines his phone light over to Kirie, “How big was this weapon?”

Kirie holds her hands up about a shoulder lengths apart, “About this big?”

“It’s a hair straightener,” Kirika bluntly states.

Yuuri pulls a plastic baggy out, “So this should be about enough, right?”

Kirie and Kirika nod.

Saito takes the bag from Yuuri’s hands and walks over to the two girls, “Aight, lead the way you two.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n!” Kirie salutes and heads out, Kirika and Saito following just behind her.

“Ah! Er, what about--!” Yuuri stops herself from nearly shouting out to the trio who have already left the room. Her arm slowly descends back to her side. She sighs and turns away from the door.

“Alright, any minute now he’ll come back with a,” Yuuri imitates Saito, “Whoops! this is a scary situation and I should be right beside Yuuri like a good boyfriend!” She goes back to her normal voice. “Then I’ll be all ‘Ohhh, Saito! That’s fine! I know you’re not great at the whole boyfriend thing, but I forgive you because I’m a good girlfriend!’ And he’ll be: ‘You’re too good to me, Yuuri! Man, whatever can I do to make it up to you, the girl I love more than life itself!’ And I’ll be like: “Don’t get down on yourself, Saito! After we talk out our feelings and you listen I’m sure we’ll be A-OK!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Akina says from behind Yuuri, Cerys beside her.

Yuuri whirls to face the two with a surprised nya.

Cerys smirks. “I can’t believe Saito was imaginary the whole time.” She shines her phone light on the stressing club president. “Is making a tulpa your superpower?”

Yuuri stammers and fidgets. “I was, I was just uh, I was uh…” She shakes her head and composes herself, “Don’t worry about it. More importantly, did you two find anything?”

“Ah, we did actually,” Cerys looks over to Akina, “Hey, Akina, show her the recorder.”

Akina holds up the recorder, “We found this in a box full of burned Yosakoi outfits.”

Yuuri leans back onto the counter, “Wait, burned Yosakoi outfits? That… seems bigger than the recorder.”

“Well you don’t know what’s on the recorder, Yuuri,” Cerys tells her.

“I mean you’re right but…do you...” Yuuri trails off.

Cerys interrupts her by holding up the notebook, “Well if that’s not enough for you, look at this.”

“What’s that?” Yuuri asks.

“It’s a notebook with a bunch of names written in it. We found under Haruhiko’s bed. It seems to just be a schedule book. Eriri’s name appears a lot.”

Yuuri tilts her head, “Is that it? The only thing you found is that the President and Vice-President have meetings often?”

“Too often for her tastes, she’s just jealous.” Akina jests.

“Well, I didn’t look through it too hard yet. It looks just like an activity log and I’m sure I’ll find some sort of clue in it,” Cerys says as she thumbs through it quickly. “Lotta words in here.”

“So a recorder and an activity log, that’s it?” Yuuri asks.

“Gee, what did you find then?” Akina asks, crossing her arms.

“Um, nothing yet.” Yuuri looks away.

“Well, glad to see you and Saito were helpful,” Cerys says.

“Probably too busy searching all over each other to find any clues.” Akina follows up.

Yuuri clenches her fists and holds her voice back, “J-Just what do you think we were doing in…?!”

“To be honest, it sounded like you weren’t doing anything,” Cerys shrugs, “Given what we heard when we came in.”

“That-”

Yuuri notices Kirie walk up behind Cerys and Akina. “We’re back~”

Cerys and Akina step aside for the three to make their way back into the kitchen. Kirie presents the baggy to the room, now with a brown splotchy hair straightener within it.

“Tada~!” Kirie whispers in her sing-song voice.

“Is that blood?” Cerys asks.

“It most definitely is.” Saito walks over to Kirie, “Just don’t know whose blood it could be. It could even be a random bathroom incident for all we know.”

“What kind of random bathroom incident results in a blood-splattered hair straightener,” Kirika mumbles from behind him.

“Anything else?” Akina asks.

Kirie has an ‘aha’ moment. She hands the bag to Saito, then pulls a pair of keys from her pocket. “Tada~ again!”

“Oh hey,” Saito says, “you didn’t show these earlier.”

“Just like in Detective Soloman, a real detective saves the pivotal evidence for the climax!” Kirie says, striking a pose.

“Quit goofing off and gimmie those!” Cerys jumps up and nabs them from Kirie’s hand mid-pose, “These could be the keys to the attic!”

“Attic?” The four ask in unison.

“Oh, I guess we didn’t tell you guys about that,” Cerys says, “We found Chiya’s phone while looking through the bedrooms. Don’t ask me why she didn’t have it. It had a message from Haruhiko on there that told her to lock up the attic when she was done using it.”

“Because for some reason these idols lock their attic,” Akina adds.

“They have an attic? I don’t remember seeing one.” Kirika says.

“We have proof that it exists and suspicious-looking keys that could be for opening it, so it could be the last thing that could lead us to what we want,” Cerys tells her, “I just have no idea where it could be.”

“Oh,” Kirie says, “Could that have maybe been the string I saw in the hall earlier?”

“Man,” Saito gives her a pat on the back, “You’ve really been an aces this search, Kirie.”

“Wow, I didn’t think you could think,” Akina says.

Cerys grabs Kirie’s hand and starts to head out of the kitchen, “C’mon, ace; let’s get moving.”