Near one o'clock in the morning, Ikeda, drenched in cold sweat, ran home, and he didn't calm down until he saw the familiar door.

There was a light in the house, and it seemed that my father had returned drunk.

He crept into the house and said tentatively, "I'm back." ”

No one responded, only the sound of his own heavy breathing.

Ikeda went to the lighted room and opened the door halfway, relieved to see his father drunkenly asleep in the kotatsu, several empty bottles scattered around him.

When I came home in the middle of the night, I found that my son was not there, and I slept carelessly. Ikeda helped his father turn off the light, closed the door, and muttered in a low voice.

He went to take a shower and went back to his room, where he lay on the bed, but he didn't feel sleepy at all. As soon as you close your eyes, the corpse hanging under the rope and Matsuo's miserable face will appear repeatedly.

Until it was dark outside, Ikeda stared at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes open.

He thought about it all night, but he didn't understand anything, only a mess in his brain, and a bad feeling of headache and malaise.

Why did Matsuo commit suicide? And he had to be hanged in the faculty member's office, so what was the point? What the hell was going on with that weird bookstore? Who was the owner of the bookstore? Why did you designate me to go to Matsuo's office at midnight to steal something? Could it be that Matsuo's death had something to do with him?

Tossing and turning for a while, Ikeda looked at the clock, it was almost time to get ready for school, he was tired, but he did not dare to ask for leave, probably because of his weak heart, and Ikeda felt that his absence from work on the day the body was found in the school would look suspicious.

Today he caught the bus, so he didn't pass by Tianyi's bookstore. Even if he chose to walk to school, Ikeda knew that the bookstore owner would not open the door so early, and that he was the kind of person who would never crawl out of the bed before 10 o'clock in the morning, so even if he passed by the bookstore, it would be in vain.

The situation at the school was similar to what Ikeda had imagined, and the man on the night shift found the body around four o'clock, and he did not call an ambulance, but called the police.

At dawn, the police had sealed off the entire third floor of the teaching building, and the investigation and evidence collection were proceeding slowly and methodically, and many teachers and even students were questioned. Ikeda was not asked, perhaps because he was too inconspicuous, or because he came across as an introvert and difficult to talk to.

All morning the students were whispering, of course, about Matsuo's death, and the teachers seemed to be absent-minded in their lectures, so they let the classroom discipline go.

"Ah...... Matsuo, that's really the worst person! A mean and obscene middle-aged uncle, in his forties, but still unmarried, usually has a rough attitude with some female teachers, and I heard that some female students have been harassed by him. However, this guy doesn't leave any evidence for doing bad things, and he has a good relationship with the school board, and he is very good at scolding parents, so the principal can't expel him, so everyone has to watch him come to the school every day with a villainous face.

It's great that this kind of person can commit suicide, and finally do a good thing for the world, hey, officer, don't look at me like that, I'm such a straight person, I'm just telling the truth that no one wants to say. ”

It was Kurosawa-sensei who said this to the police. Menopause has passed, a Chinese language teacher who is close to retirement age, and a hot-blooded aunt who is open-mouthed. It's hard to get into leadership with such a personality, but this type of person is never hated by colleagues or students, except for Matsuo......

If Matsuo is compared to slippery dirty water, Kurosawa is boiling hot oil. The snobbish Matsuo skillfully uses both groveling and high-spirited forms in front of different people, but when he encounters Aunt Kurosawa, he can only hide far away. It's very simple: if you put a villain with an ordinary person, he is just a nuisance, and if you compare a villain with a very upright person, he is nothing but dross.

The testimony collected by the police will naturally be screened and analyzed, but everyone seems to have recognized Matsuo's character, in short, it gives people the feeling of being innocent.

But because of this, the problem becomes even more confusing.

A person like this would commit suicide? And he obviously lives alone, so why would he sneak into the school in the middle of the night to commit suicide? Can't he hang himself at home?

It was almost noon, and the school finally announced that classes would be closed for half a day, and the students could go back after lunch.

This was good news for Ikeda, who couldn't wait to get to the bookstore, where he had too many questions to answer. However, he still finished his lunch peacefully in the cafeteria and left one after another with most of the people.

Ikeda told himself that he had to be very cautious, not to do anything out of the ordinary, and to be as careful as possible even if no one was paying attention to him at all.

He walked for an hour to get home, and he seemed very calm all the way, and he didn't even glance in when he passed Tianyi's bookstore.

"I'm back. With that, Ikeda closed the door and sat down on the porch to change his shoes.

When he walked into the living room, his father was sitting on the kotatsu with a cigarette in his mouth and watching TV, when he heard the sound of Ikeda opening the door, and he didn't look back, "Did you skip class by coming back so early?"

Ikeda also sat down by the kotatsu and took his homework out of his school bag, "Matsuo-sensei committed suicide at school last night, so classes were suspended in the afternoon. ”

Dad frowned slightly after hearing this: "Ah...... That guy is your homeroom teacher, I still remember him. I visited my home once last year, and I walked in with that disgusted look and put on an arrogant face when I spoke to me, what that guy. He took a puff of his cigarette: "How did you die? Jumping off the roof of the school, or hanging yourself or something?"

Ikeda looked numb and pushed his thick glasses: "I was hanged, I heard that he sneaked into the school at night and did it in his office, but I don't know the specifics." ”

"Oh, yes. Ikeda's father reached for the remote control on the table, and he burped as soon as he moved, and a smell of alcohol rushed out of his mouth, but Ikeda didn't pay much attention to it, he was used to it anyway.

"Maybe it's going to be in the news. "Dad cut a few stations, found a channel that was playing the news, and stopped.

"The new year is approaching, and the law and order situation in Hokkaido is still on a downward trend at the end of the year, and it is once again the last compared to all regions in the province, in addition to frequent burglaries, violent crime has also increased, and the police spokesman refused to respond to this data, and today our reporter and several experts invited by us came to ......."

The news was as tuned as always, with some depressing news and then a few so-called experts to make some unhelpful afterthoughts.

"If your school is in the news, maybe you'll be on TV too. Dad turned up the volume on the TV as he spoke.

Ikeda replied nonchalantly, "I don't remember a reporter or anything like that coming in the morning." ”

Time passed quickly, and Ikeda sat there doing his homework for two hours, while his father drank a few glasses, stared at the boring news and fell asleep.

Packing up his things and turning off the TV, Ikeda returned to his room and retrieved a pen from under his pillow, a regular pen that he had taken from Matsuo's desk last night.

The pen reminds Ikeda that last night was not a dream, not an illusion, not an imagination, but a real thing.

December 11, 4 p.m.

Ikeda went to Tenichi's bookstore again, and when he opened the door and entered, he saw almost exactly the same scene as yesterday.

But today, Tianyi didn't ignore Ikeda, he directly put down the book and coffee in his hand, and took the lead in speaking: "Come here, sit casually." ”

Ikeda walked over to Tenichi's desk and found that there was no such thing as a chair, and that the only sofa chair in the room had been occupied by the bookstore's owner, so he replied, "I'd better stand." ”

Tianyi opened the drawer at hand, took out a book with a black book cover and put it on the table: "Kazuya Miura's secrets are all here." He pressed his hand to the book, not in the slightest intention of taking it away: "What about what you faught?"

Ikeda asked rhetorically, "Since you have my book in your hand, you must already know that I have done what you have done, so why bother?" As he spoke, he put Matsuo's pen on Tenichi's desk.

Tianyi yawned and looked disdainful: "It's because I know far more than you think, so I can't show you Miura's book for the time being." ”

"You're going to repent?!" Ikeda raised his voice, shock and anger on the verge of anger.

However, Tianyi quickly extinguished his emotions: "The reason you want to read this book is to take revenge on Miura, in order to vent the resentment accumulated by him in the past two years of oppression, huh...... may also be ready to sprinkle all the grievances in his short life on Miura. It doesn't matter, I'm for you, but I think you may have more pressing things to do at this stage. He changed his words: "This morning, in your school, there is a policeman, he is very good, even very shrewd. At five o'clock in the morning, he was the first police officer to arrive at the scene of Matsuo's 'suicide', and immediately discovered the suspicion and made the correct judgment - Matsuo was killed. ”

Ikeda's face turned pale, and he involuntarily took a step back: "What are you talking about......"