Murder At The Rainy Mansion ~The Never Ending 100 Tales~

Chapter 51: Today you will fall

While Shimizu and Tanimoto went searching for Reiko, Ayano quietly watched Reiko’s spirit arranging some envelopes on the dining table without alerting her.

Ayano: “Envelopes…? I wonder what is inside? Oh, Shun?”

She noticed Shun was staring fixedly at the table with a pale face. There were two A4 size brown envelopes.

Shun: “Ayano.”

Ayano: “What is it?”

Shun: “Both Reiko-san and I are spirits. Is there any way for me to sense where her body is?”

Ayano: “Even if you are a spirit, you still can only find her normally. Being a living spirit simply means that you are walking without your physical body. It is not like you have develop a superpower. What’s the matter?”

Shun: “Nothing. I think I have seen these brown envelopes before I fell from the rooftop.”

* * *

When Takato returned to the mansion, he bumped into Shimizu and the others who were about to search for Reiko at the wide hallway in front of the entrance. He split up with them and joined to look for Reiko.

Takato and Tanimoto went to the south annex where Reiko was staying but couldn’t find her there. Then, Tanimoto left to join Shimizu, so Takato went to the kitchen by himself to see Reiko’s spirit.

Hmm. Her spirit is really here.

He could see Reiko repeatedly arranging the brown envelopes from the hallway. Reiko seemed to be in a trance and doing the same action repeatedly without noticing Ayano and the others who were standing nearby.

Takato stood behind Shun and Ayano while listening to them talking about the brown envelopes. Shun looked unlike himself and his face was pale. Takato looked at Shun’s face while wondering why Reiko’s living spirit had appeared here on the day the first incident happened. Takato believed that Reiko must have something bothering her mind and her soul ended up flying to the Rainy Mansion before her body did.

After thinking of that possibility, Takato went upstairs – a place that he rarely went. Halfway there, he heard a man’s voice whispering into his ear, saying, “You’re going to fall down.”

“I won’t,” Takato said without looking at the ghost.

Then the staircase ghost replied, “Today you might fall down.”

Takato wondered what the ghost meant but continued to climb up the stairs to the rooftop. Surprisingly, he saw Reiko there.

She looked at him and said in a calm tone, “Oh. I didn’t expect you would come here.”

Reiko’s body, a bottle of medicine and a water bottle were lying on the floor near her feet.

“Reiko-san,” Takato called out to her as a strong wind blew across the rooftop. In his mind, he felt this looked like a situation where the murderer would push the victim in a 2 hours suspense drama. “Were you the one who pushed Shun down the roof?” He had come to the rooftop because he thought that she might be here if she was the culprit.

“Push down the roof sounds a bit too much, don’t you think? I just pushed him away because I was in a panic,” Reiko admitted frankly. “How did you know it was me?”

Takato: “Just now at the kitchen downstairs, you were holding two envelopes. I noticed Shun turned pale when he saw that scene. I assumed he must have witnessed a similar scene right before he fell down the roof.”

“Hahaha. I see. That action, I didn’t do it because I wanted to. I just performed the action that bothered my mind repeatedly. After all, I’m basically a ghost anyway,” Reiko sad with a sorrowful face while looking at her spiritless body lying at her feet.