Weary eyes casted Asher suspicion. All of a sudden, at the snap of a finger, he took the stand. Asher Trent beca the pri suspect.
"It wasn’t ! It wasn’t!" Asher craned his head left and right, a deer struck by lights. His footsteps were unsteady and he carried himself too close to the evidence. William furrowed his brow. If he tried to ss up the evidence...
"Save it for your testimony," Detective Matasaburō said. "You are our first official suspect."
"A-and not Kazi?" Asher pointed at the aforentioned man. "He had motive! Right Nash? He was—"
"That was nothing more than squabble," Nash interjected. "I let my emotions get the best of , I admit it. But my priority is catching the killer. I don’t give a shit if it’s you or Kazi or anyone else in this room. Tony deserves better. He deserves for the killer to be exposed."
"It’s Kazi!" Asher continued pointing at the innocent man. It did not make him look better. "It’s him! It has to be!"
Kazi didn’t speak. He remained neutral, a small smile on his face. Danzaburou clapped his hands together to get attention. He failed as the lone suspect grew more and more desperate.
"H-he had a motivation and look! An unknown level! He has to be strong." Asher pointed harder. Danzaburou clapped again. The internet celebrity didn’t care and kept going, "Where was he anyway? He also could have been fabricating evidence with the detective—"
Frustrated, Danzaburou yelled, "Okay, okay! We get it! Testimony first!"
"No," Detective Matasaburō said. "Tiline first. Allow to summarize what has happened from our understanding. Ari, are you writing everything down?"
"Yes, sir!" The idol saluted him.
"We need a base. Numbers. So far, has there been a ti?" The detective’s inquiry was t with a shake of the head from Ari. "Does anybody have a good estimate of the ti then?"
"Oh, um, I might?" Jules, the woman with the cat on her lap, cleared her throat. "Lily over here, my cat, she always sleeps at four o’clock in the afternoon. That was right before we entered the tunnel."
"Isn’t that suspicious?" Asher asked.
No one answered him. Instead, the detective adjusted his shades and moved on.
"A pet’s internal clock. I suppose we can go with that. Does anybody have any objections?" Detective Matasaburō paused to let his words linger. "Alright, then. Now, the train took about twenty minutes—"
"Thirty," Kazi corrected. "We were going slow at first, rember? And I doubt even at top speed this thing matches a modern bullet train."
"It went up to two hundred kilotres an hour," Danzaburou supplied. Kazi stood in triumph.
"Fine. Thirty minutes." Detective Matasaburō gestured at the paper indicating everybody’s position. "Now, we have a general idea of where everyone was after we left the tunnel, but not before. Tell , did any of you move compartnts in that ti?"
"I did," Noor said. " and Lala went from the diner to the fourth compartnt. We bumped into a lot of people."
"I can confirm," John added. "Sobody grabbed from my seat, in fact."
"Yep, that happened," William confird. "I heard it."
"So chaos ensued in the fourth compartnt." Detective Matasaburō nodded. "Any other events?"
Again, Jules cleared her throat. "A-actually, um, yes. Anansi, he, um, ran away."
The detective delved straight into interrogation mode. "A new player? Where is he now?"
"He’s not a player, he’s...a monkey." Jules shrank in embarrassnt when she heard the confused whispers. "I was hiding him. I think so of you noticed. Uh, he might have stolen so of your food."
"A monkey," Detective Matasaburō repeated. William had never seen the investigator so stunned and so far he had kept his composure. "That...that does complicate things. A monkey. A monkey..."
"What kind?" Kazi asked.
"A marmoset," Jules replied. "A little guy, really. Very harmless, but he does have this nasty habit of stealing. I’ve tried to reprimand him but he never listens. O-oh, but don’t worry, he listens to ! Just not when it cos to stealing..." She hung her head, sighing, and looked back up.
"A monkey..." Detective Matasaburō was still muttering the word. "An actual monkey..."
At this point, William was curious. "Is there so significance to that?"
"I thought..." The detective shook his head, hands in his trench coat. "I saw sothing flying out. Sothing dark. I assud it was liquid, but..."
"Oh." Jules flushed. "Y-yeah, he’s potty-trained. He probably peed outside. S-sorry if you saw that."
’I do not want to visualize that,’ William thought.
"Uh, hello!" Asher slapped his chest. "I’m still under suspicion here—"
"We are establishing a tiline, so shut up and listen," the detective snapped. "There is a chance you may co innocent out of this."
Asher piped down, the grueling man too intimidating to counter. William felt him. His level might have been lower than his own, but he looked mad scary. It reminded him of his dad.
"Events, everyone. Please, we must establish all movent during the tunnel. Starting with you." The detective pointed at William.
"O-oh, um..." William went into thought. "I was just sitting and holding onto dear life. Uhh, soone stepped on my foot pretty early-on."
"That was ," Hugo admitted. "Sorry, bro."
William was quick to accept his apology. "You’re fine."
"So you were there the entire ti?" The detective asked.
"Yep. I was still there when the lights ca on." William paused and looked up at the detective. "You were there so you should know."
"Explain your view anyway."
"I was at the window seat. In front of was Kazi and John." William furrowed his brows as he recalled the view. "You and Hugo were tussling, right? Noor was...well, she was at the door but she was coming from the third compartnt, not the dining area."
"Okay, wait," Noor interrupted, "I went to the third compartnt, yeah, but I quickly ca back—"
"You will get your turn," Detective Matasaburō said, irritated.
Noor scoffed. "Excuse ? I don’t mind shutting up but have so goddamn class. I’m just trying to remove unwarranted suspicion here."
The detective glared at her. Noor glared back. William didn’t think it was a good idea to continue with his testimony. However, sobody was dead. Now wasn’t the ti to be ek. "U-uh, yeah, um...I can’t really rember much else."
The detective turned back. His eyes darted to Sun-young. "And you?"
"I saw the sa thing, except I was at an empty table by myself." Sun-young drew in a breath. She sat on the seat backwards, using the back of the chair as an armrest. "You were fighting Hugo or sothing? I don’t rember anything else."
"Hrn."
Detective Matasaburō went to each person, confirming and prodding at their positions. In William’s view, most of it seed airtight. Also, it was hard to lie when a rugged detective in shades questioned you in a guttural tone.
Ksenia testimony ca. She had a bit to say. "After the train left the tunnel, I checked on the bathroom twice. I didn’t get much of an answer."
"The bathroom that Paul went to shortly before the tunnel? The sa bathroom that Tony died in? How strange." The detective pushed his rectangular sunglasses. "This is huge. You were at the cusp of the cri scene. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?"
"No, it was deathly quiet. I almost thought he wasn’t there," Ksenia replied. "But soone was definitely inside. I heard a couple groans. I assud he was taking a massive shit, so I left him. I didn’t think to consider that he was...dying."
"Any slls?"
"Not really? I don’t really rember, to be honest. I had no reason to believe anyone else but Paul was in there," Ksenia said.
That was that. No further information, just a footnote that Ksneia had indeed visited the bathroom after leaving the tunnel.
Nash’s turn arrived. He was the calst of them, surprisingly. "I was sitting there too. During turbulence, moving seed like suicide so I strapped myself in."
"And shortly before the tunnel? You were close to the victim, yes? Did you keep track of his movents?"
Nash didn’t imdiately answer the detective’s inquiry. "...he left soti before the tunnel."
"Yes, we know. However, nobody can confirm when he left. They didn’t care, after all. You, as the man closest to him, should know."
"I don’t," Nash said. "I don’t know when he got up and left."
"Why?"
"Because I have a shitty sense of ti." Nash’s words, despite their profanity, were deadly calm. "I was looking at the window, bored. Simple at that."
Nash didn’t elaborate. While so were not convinced, William was. He might have been the so-called cool leader of the group, but jocks were jocks. They were dumb as bricks no matter how they tried to hide that fact.
With the exception of Noor and Nash, there wasn’t much to argue on. Everybody was vague, courtesy of the darkness and turmoil, and generally consistent. That was until they got to Kazi.
People weren’t perfect. mories and conversations, especially in tis of stress, were regularly forgotten. After the death of Tony, after seeing his corpse, even William had a hard ti rembering exactly what went on. The voices were muffled from the screeches of the train and the darkness prevented his brain from formulating presumptions.
Kazi did not have such imperfections.
"So, when the darkness hit, I asked, ’Is soone leaving? John? Hello?’ Then John replied: ’I’m right here. Soone grabbed my arm." He was cut off and another person ntioned they were grabbed." Pause and a sweeping glance. Kazi asked plainly, "Who was that?"
"Oh, that was ," Hugo said. "Sobody’s claws were practically digging into . When the lights ca on," his eyes went to Detective Matasaburō, "it was this dude, apparently."
"Hrn." The detective didn’t comnt on the accusation. He let Kazi continue.
"I heard more voices. Panic, mostly, nothing important, and I yelled, ’Is everybody alright!?’ It was then that Hugo stood up and stepped on William’s foot. Following that was the announcent to strap up."
Right. Chaos.
’Now I rember. Man, that was crazy.’ William shook his head. ’I don’t ever want to go through that again. I got intense motion sickness.’
"Fifteen minutes passed, I believe. I could be wrong but it feels about right," Kazi continued. "That was when Ksenia bumped into soone. She said, ’Watch where you’re going!’"
"Thought it was just so dude, then thought it was Paul," Ksenia added. She had ntioned as much in her testimony. "The sa height, a beanpole, but...I think clothes were different. I think. I can’t exactly say why though."
"A couple minutes passed, the lights ca on. You ended up on the floor, I rember." Kazi nodded at Ksenia. "Noor and Lala, as William ntioned, appeared from the third compartnt. Sun-young looked like she was vomiting."
"My stomach hit the edge of the table," Sun-young explained.
It was strange. All of a sudden, the conversation flipped. Instead of being questioned, Kazi was questioning everyone else. They didn’t even notice it until the silence settled.
"Asher Trent." Detective Matasaburō turned to him. "We’ve gone through the testimony. We’ve gone through the chaos in the fourth compartnt. There was a lot, for sure. However, it seems that your guilt has worsened."
Asher panicked again. "H-how? Wait, let testify—"
"If you testify, it will be as a suspect, not a witness," the detective cut off. "Why? Because there was a consistency in the testimonials here so far. Sobody was walking through the middle of the train. A lone individual caused chaos. They grabbed Hugo. They tussled with Ksenia. We have officially established that sobody not supposed to be there was there."
"And the only person whose location cannot be confird..." Dariush’s voice echoed like a righteous judge. "...is you, Asher Trent—AT."
Danzaburou grinned. "Well, well, well. Here we are again."
Asher’s eyes fell into despair. "I...wait, that’s not...it wasn’t !"
"Defend yourself then. Where were you?"
"At the front with Danzaburou—"
"Nope, nope, nope! No, you weren’t!"
"Stop lying!" Asher yelled. "I was there! I was! Why does nobody believe !?"
His words spoke for themselves. He had no alibi, his initials were at the cri scene, he had gone to the kitchen at so point, his body type was tall like Paul’s, and, most of all, his location was unknown. William wasn’t sure whether to be surprised. He was an internet celebrity, of course he was weirdo.
"If you do not defend yourself adequately," said Kintaro, his deep bass growling, "then you will be handed the guilty verdict."
"Agreed."
"Mhm, mhm!"
Danzaburou and his lackey Haruka were convinced. Momoji was silent. The blue tanuki hadn’t said a word. But the bartender, Kintaro, the level-headed jury, seed convinced. A majority jury would spell the end for the forr e-celebrity.
"Does anybody object?" Kintaro asked. "Because at this rate—"
"Objection! I do!" Slamming the evidence table, finger pointed at the jury, was none other than Kazi Hossain. "I don’t think Asher Trent did it, and I can definitively prove it!"
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