Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1 Chapter 3 part1

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Danganronpa Kirigiri Volume 1
Chapter 3: Murder at the Sirius Observatory 2, part 1

The school I attend is an all-girls' combined middle and high school, with a 150-year-long history to its name. It's a missionary school world-renowned for schooling young ladies, although in recent years the religious aspect of it has faded a little. Nowadays, the brickwork church and old school building are about the only places you can see its missionary history.

Part-time jobs are technically against the rules there, but if you turn in a request to the school, you'll usually get permission anyway. Still, it seems like I was the first person in the school's entire history to ask for permission to work as a detective. Though, I mean, as a detective I'm not really working for a business or for a living; perhaps you could say it's just who I am. Or maybe it would be better to say that it's a talent. So I kinda wasn't sure if there was any point to asking permission to be a detective in the first place. The nun who's the headmistress was happy about it, though. Maybe to her, a detective isn't a state of being or a talent or anything, but volunteer work or something.

At any rate, I'm the only detective in the high school. I'm allowed to wear my uniform during formal detective activities, so for the sake of my work, I usually wear culotte shorts instead of a skirt. This apparently garnered me some animosity from upperclassmen, but it also won me a fair amount of friends.

In order to prioritize my work as a detective, I'm not in any clubs. But it's not like there's always work for me, so after school, there isn't really much difference between me and someone who just doesn't participate in anything at all. I just go straight back to the dorm.

I've been living in the school dorm ever since I enrolled. I live in a single small room, 4.5 tatami mats (or about 9 by 9 feet), with a kitchen, bath, and toilet attached. This is the reality behind a school for young "ladies". I have classmates who are still envious of dorm life, but the rules are more strict than the average household, too.

It was December, the winter of my first year of high school, when I opened my personal dorm mailbox and noticed I'd been sent a black envelope. A completely black B5 envelope, with no stamp or address. But my name was printed on it in white letters, so there was no doubt that it was meant for me. I picked it up and headed into the dorm.

"Oh! Welcome back, Yui." In the hall, I ran into a girl who lived in one of the other dorm rooms. "What's that? Another love letter?"

"No way." I smiled bitterly, looking down at the black envelope. It didn't really look like a love letter. If it is one, it must have been a pretty eccentric kind of person that sent it.

I'd gotten two love letters in the past. One was from a small squirrel-like girl from the next class over, a member of the crafts club. I turned her down, of course. I had to. To this very day, I occasionally catch her lurking in the shadows of the school building, watching me from a distance. The other one was from a girl who sent me a very poetic letter, but there was no name attached, so I don't know who sent it. I didn't bother using my detective skills to investigate any further than that.

I went back into my room, throwing myself down onto the bed with my coat still on. I faced the ceiling, holding the envelope up under the fluorescent light, and broke the seal. Inside there was a letter, and then another, smaller black envelope. For the time being, I just unfolded the letter.

A written request
for Yui Samidare-dono

I hope that business is going well for you as we reach the busy schedules of the end of the year.

My name is Yoshizono Ooe, and I am contacting you as a representative for someone else. Presently, my client is settling a problematic dispute, and so circumstances lead them to send this written request. Furthermore, please understand that I am unable to reveal their identity to you here.

The client has reason to believe that their property, the Sirius Observatory, will soon be visited by a dire emergency situation.

The details of this request will be given to you during an interview at the location given below, and pending the client's approval, we will plan to contact you again.

Meeting Location: Hatesaki Station
Meeting Date: December 22nd, 3:00 P.M.

Furthermore, you will be compensated with one million yen up front, one million yen upon completion, and all other necessary expenses paid.

We look forward to meeting you on the scheduled date.

Representative Yoshizono Ooe

The letter said it was a written request, but its contents gave off a more bizarre impression. Maybe because it didn't have the name of the person making the request, or the details of the request being made. On one hand, it felt like it was some kind of prank or scam, but on the other hand, the emphasis of the key points admittedly felt raw and earnest.

It had been about three years since I'd become a detective, but this was the first time I'd gotten a request quite like this one. I couldn't understand what it meant, no matter how hard I thought about it. That fact alone piqued my curiosity more than any other incident I'd encountered before.

The letter was on plain white paper, and the words were clearly typed in word processing software. Maybe if I investigated the font, I could deduce what software was used. Using the type of ink it was printed with, I could find out the manufacturer of the printer. But I didn't see any point in figuring that stuff out.

For the time being, I set the letter aside, and opened up the other black envelope. Inside was a folded letter on black washi paper. The white characters were written in neat lines with a writing brush.

A Message for the Detective
Heed the Cry of the Noir

Location: Sirius Observatory, 30 million yen
Weapon: Large shears, 5 million yen
Weapon: Fainting drugs, 5 million yen
Trick: Dismemberment, 80 million yen
Total Cost: 120 million yen

According to the above costs, the following detective is summoned
Yui Samidare

"What is this?" I muttered to myself as I turned the black letter around, staring at it. Curiouser and curiouser. Judging from the vocabulary used, it might have been hinting at the information that was hidden from the actual request. Some kind of word association game? Guess at the request using this? But then what was with the numbers written by the words?

Maybe it was a puzzle I had to solve to prove my worth as a detective. There was no doubt that the person making the request was trying to test me in some way. Considering how they went out of their way to use a proxy, they probably wanted to turn away the useless detectives at the door without giving them any information about the request at all.

It seemed like something big was about to happen. Problem was, it wasn't long until the date of the meetup. The day after tomorrow was the day. If I turned in a form I could get the day off from classes, so that was fine, but could I really solve this riddle by then...? There wasn't time.

I jumped up out of bed, flew out of my room, and hurried back towards the school. The school had a data processing room where you could use the computers for whatever you wanted. If I needed to do research, using the internet there would probably be the quickest way. (For the record, I don't have my own computer, and my cellphone can't access the internet.)

It took a few minutes to walk from the dorm to the school building. There were still some students there who were in the middle of club activities, or who just hadn't gone home yet; I jogged past them to the data processing room. There were a few students in that room, too, wordlessly typing on their keyboards. I gave them a sidelong glance before taking one of the computers for myself.

First, I searched for "Sirius Observatory". I confirmed its existence surprisingly easily. Apparently, Sirius Observatory was a private observatory owned by a Ryuuichirou Kiba. With a newfound fortune amassed through the iron industry during the postwar economic boom, he retired from the business and used the money to build a private observatory, retreating there to live out his life in seclusion. The word "observatory" brings to mind the sort of establishment owned by universities and research facilities, but apparently, plenty of people with an interest in stars and astronomical observation will build their own private-level observatories. Sirius Observatory, too, seemed to be the product of such a hobby.

So was the mysterious person making the request this Ryuuichirou Kiba person? If he was involved in the postwar iron industry, at the very least it was possible that he was familiar with high society. That must have been why he couldn't make his request openly.

I tried researching Ryuuichirou Kiba next, but I couldn't really find anything that seemed relevant. I couldn't find any record of him being involved in any previous incidents, either. Well, there's only so much you can turn up by just looking online, after all. I returned to the dorms for the day without making any more progress than that.

Stay tuned for the next update next Sunday (PST)!

Chapter end