The Eccentric, the Beauty, and the Detective: Kiriki Junka's Mystery Log Volume 1 Chapter 18

Pre-chapter Eccentricities:

Kokeshi:

Two male students fled from the intersection on the third floor. Unfortunately, it happened in an instant, so I couldn’t identify their silhouettes or hairstyles. They disappeared into the old wing. Then, the sound of an unknown man screamed from below like a curse.

“Let’s have a look.”

Junka, interested, had already headed out of the classroom. I rushed after him, running through the hallway, we rapidly approached the junction, passing through the door now that the two had left, and nobody was around.

“It’s the first time I’ve used this hall since the entrance ceremony.”

Junka placed his hand on the railing and walked halfway through. He then peered down the hall.

“This’ bad!”

I turned my eyes down the same hall. A uniformed boy was holding both legs, hitting the ground outside. His face was red, his eyes distorted, cries like a mad beast surged forth. One of those legs was clearly bent unnaturally, he had certainly broken it.

Junka hurriedly rushed back into the school.

“Those two pushed him out the window!”

A bit behind, I chased after him, flying down to the first floor below the junction. The defenestrated boy was crumpled up on the ground, rolling around. He had a simple, kokeshi-like face. His narrow eyes were as sharp as a paring knife (a knife used to pry open a shellfish). His hair was glossy and short.

Junka was calling an ambulance.

“Get a teacher, Rouji-kun.”

“Right.”

Still stunned by the shocking emergency, I simply followed Junka’s directions.

Once the ambulance had taken away the victim, I was bombarded with questions from the faculty. The one unfortunately thrown from the third floor was 1, 1’s Koshi Keisuke. Junka and I answered the questions honestly. There was a particular focus on the two who had fled the scene, but we didn’t know what we didn’t know so that was all we could say.

“With Aoyagi-sensei and this incident, class 1’s heated, eh?” poked Junka as we skewered some takoyaki at a food stand on our way home.

I was drinking cola with a straw.

“I know Koshi Keisuke.”

“Is that so, Rouji-kun?”

“It didn’t come to me ’till I heard his name, though.”

I rummaged through my memory and pulled his file.

“According to my friend Iwai, there’s a rumor that Koshi quickly got in a fight with an upperclassmen and beat him down, a real bad egg.”

Junka laughed.

“Almost like you.”

“No, I’m not that good in a fight. I know that much. If Koshi’s really that good, there probably isn’t anybody here who can take him on one on one. He’s a first year, but he’s already quickly gotten to being the head honcho at Shibuyamadai.”

“He’s quite tough.”

I stuffed my face with takoyaki.

“That’s not all. According to Iwai, Koshi’s recently joined the silver shadow gang. Though he’s low on the pecking order because of his age, he’s aiming high. He keeps to himself aside from a few close friends at school.”

Junka couldn’t hide his concern.

“Gang membership aside, it seems to me that those two that fled were the culprits. While they might get beaten to a pulp individually, if it was a two on one, they had a chance of throwing him over the banister. In the end we weren’t able to get their names.”

“True.”

“I’d like our detective association to unveil their true identities. Just why did they want to injure Koshi-kun? There was even a chance he would die from that height.”

I furrowed my brow.

“Oi, oi, you’re grades are going to feel it if you do something reckless during exam season.”

Junka acted as if he was fine, “What? I’ll just fit it in between studying. Well…” a laugh, “If he talks about who tried to kill him, it’ll end there. This is just a game, just a game.”

The next morning, I was munching on some toast and watching the news when the report about Koshi Keisuke’s fall astonished me.

“Yesterday around 2:00pm, a student at a private high school in the city, fell from the third story window, seriously injuring the bones in both legs. Eye-witness reports claim to have seen two male students flee the scene, and the police are investigating both possibilities of crime and accident.”

It was a pretty big deal. After finishing my breakfast, and heading out, I immediately brought it up with Junka. He yawned as he walked, and the day had a chill for the first time in a while, the sky covered in clouds.

“The eyewitnesses on the news were probably us. There wasn’t any information we didn’t know. I wonder if the police are still interviewing Koshi-kun. It ought to be over now since he’s the victim and he wasn’t unconscious after all.”

A voice called out to us as we left the station.

“Kiriki-san! Suzaku-san!”

Hinata approached, adjusting her black-rimmed glasses. Despite the tests, her distinctive camera was strung around her neck, and held in hand.

“Big news, big news!”

I cut to the chase, “Is this about the incident with Koshi?”

Hinata was greatly taken aback.

“Eh? You are already aware? Well… I suppose I saw it this morning on TV, myself,” she put a hand to her mouth as if she had realised something, “‘Koshi?’ You mean Koshi-san from our class? Why did you know that?”

When I told her we were the eyewitnesses, she was dumbfounded.

“So that’s how it is…”

“That’s where, Tatsuno-san,” Junka asked, “I would like you to investigate Koshi-kun’s interpersonal relationships in class 1 for me. I don’t think I could get any good information, being in class 3, myself.”

Hinata responded in high spirits, “Will do! Or so I say, but I’d have been looking into it anyway as a member of the newspaper club. ‘Was it an accident or an incident?’ Leave it to me.”

“Finding out about Koshi-kun might be told who they are that have a grudge against him, or we might be able to deduce who they are. Please give it your all.”

“I will!”

The battle of the midterms was finally over, and those champions who had fought through to victory had faces awash in the exhaustion of having fully expended themselves. I held my head in my hands on my desk as I thought back on the battle I had survived. I had many sleepless nights.

As for the matter of Koshi, our class 3’s homeroom teacher was announced to fill in for class 1’s. The police were still investigating, and were going to hold a meeting to divulge their results to the parents, but they weren’t revealing anything to the public. Nao was gazing amorously at sensei as always.

Junka decided to leave, and as to avoid being caught up in the blossoming conversations of the other students, he quickly headed for the classroom door.

“Wait up, Junka. I’m coming too.”

“Me too.”

Nao came along. Our target was Hinata of class 1. I wondered if she had gathered any information.

“That would be impossible with only today,” she declared pitifully as soon as she spotted us,”everyone was studying for the next test during lunch, and now that it’s after school, they have that after school sense of relief, and they are so out of it that I won’t be able to get anything out of them. Please give me some more time.”

Junka seemed to have been prepared for it and didn’t seem too disappointed, though he did voice a complaint.

“I had hoped we could move freely now that we don’t have to study so hard… It can’t be helped, I suppose. We have tomorrow off, right?”

“That is correct.”

“So the next school day is in two days. I’ll look forward to your help then.”

“Got it.”

Junka patted his stomach.

“I’m a little hungry, so let’s all go as the detective association and hunt for scraps or something at a popular restaurant.”

No way in hell.

“Let’s go to karaoke. I’ve got some stress built up.”

Nao smiled.

“Sounds great, let’s go.”

Translator's Note:

Characters might not always say the most natural things, but I’m a subscriber to the word-for-word translation style with minimal creative liberties. Of course it isn’t perfect, and I sometimes just type whatever I understood as I read along, but you probably don’t want me to use ESV levels of footnotes for this, or make my translations interlinear. I just imagined a future where I'm a good enough translator to spawn some PBT onlyism. Not that I'd ever be well enough known for that. I appreciate every one of you 10-odd regular Junka readers. I guess you can count yourselves a part of a highly exclusive club.

Editor’s Note:

This’ll get replaced super quick by a real Editor’s Note. For now, it is just a placeholder because I couldn’t be asked to schedule this page and then check on it, so I just posted it early.

Chapter end