The audience stared in awe, mouth agape. Fukuzawa’s stomach started hurting.
Who…? Who told you to go this far…?
Everyone in the audience had their eyes and mouth open wide as they stared at whatever this was. The few hundred people here were all united with one common thought.
What’s going on?
Ranpo confidently pushed up his glasses as if he thought their silence meant they were listening.
“I know how you feel! Watching a mystery story without a solution is more disappointing than staring at the scribblings on a bathroom stall! I have come to unveil the secrets and mysteries to you all, for I am a…skill user!”
After pushing up his glasses, he subtly turned his gaze to Fukuzawa and smiled from ear to ear.
If only someone could just knock me unconscious right about now…
Despite the fact that Fukuzawa had met Ranpo only that morning, you would need to combine an entire life’s worth of exhaustion and multiply it by three to understand how he felt.
Thanks to Fukuzawa’s fatigue, his mind was finally able to catch up with what was going on.
No matter how carrying—scratch that, obnoxiously loud—his voice was, it should be impossible to be able to hear it this well in a massive theater that could hold four hundred people. In addition, the lights hanging from the ceiling couldn’t be controlled from where Ranpo was standing. There had to be someone working things from the control room.
Fukuzawa looked back at the window at the top of the auditorium. On the other side of the dimly lit window before the control panel was Ms. Egawa, smiling and giving a thumbs-up.
They were in this together. Accomplices.
Ms. Egawa must have given Ranpo a small wireless microphone, which was why his voice was projecting so well. From there, she waited for the right moment and used the control panel to turn on the lights just as they had planned.
“Now, join me as I unravel the mystery! I’ll be skipping over the boring synopsis of the murder, solely because it’d be boring. After all, what you sad non–skill users really want to know is what happened to the leading actor who was stabbed in the end. Allow me to explain.”
The nausea Fukuzawa had been feeling reached its climax. Ranpo was planning on unveiling the truth from atop the stage. The spectators were still buzzing, but there was a clear change in the mood now.
The audience’s focus was slowly returning to the center of the stage where the young man was apparently going to solve the mystery, despite the absurdity of an amateur boasting so openly. The decision of what to do with him could be made after he was finished talking, whether it be putting a stop to him or making a fuss.
Without anyone’s knowledge, a deep silence reigned over the crowd. It felt as if the continuation of the play was about to begin. Whether this was Ranpo’s objective or pure coincidence wasn’t clear, but Ranpo surveyed the silent crowd and confidently smirked before saying:
“Listen carefully. I heard a good bit of you in the crowd whispering that you thought an angel killed him. Sounds like your reasoning is that the timing was perfect, and it looked like he was stabbed by an invisible sword from the sky. So let me just take a moment to say this.” Ranpo paused for a moment. “There is an angel.”
A stir rippled through the crowd. Ranpo raised his hand into the air to cease the uproar.
“To back up this claim, the death threat that was sent to the theater the other day accurately predicted that an angel would kill the performer. It was clearly referring to the ‘angel’ in the play when it was written.”
The crowd started buzzing.
It was no surprise because the death threat was never made public.
Fukuzawa was at his wits’ end. From the playgoers’ point of view, the fact that people knew there was going to be a murder beforehand completely changed their view of the situation.
Was it really okay to tell them that?
But Ranpo showed no concern for the audience’s worries.
“However, the angel isn’t what you’re imagining. They said it in the play. The angel was invisible to the characters in the story, but the angel could see everything they did. In other words, the angel was the audience. The audience knew almost exactly what was happening but never laid a hand on the characters onstage. It was a metaphor—it meant the angel couldn’t be the killer. If anything, the angel…was a victim.”
Ranpo paused. He surveyed the audience while waiting before he revealed the secret, as if he were trying to build suspense. Then he slowly began to walk across the stage toward the crowd. It was theatrical.
“The murder and the play’s story are connected on a deep level. This play reverse
d the tide of the narrative. A group of fallen angels tried to return to the heavens, but the angel of judgment tried to stop them. Meanwhile, the angel’s judgment was but a show, and the supposed victim, a human, faked it. The angel’s and humans’ roles were reversed, switching the judge and the judged. That’s the kind of play this was. And this structure isn’t any different…”