The anchor’s mouth on TV was still moving, continuing to report on today’s weather, but Hachiman instinctively tuned it out and didn’t hear what she was saying.
Now he could only think about those words repeating over and over again: Class F, second-year student at Sobu High School, Class F, classmate of Shō Tobe, the second victim.
“Bro, I remember that’s your class, right?”
Komachi, who had already finished breakfast quickly, was still lazily lounging on the sofa.
But now she sat up straight, her eyes wide as she stared at the reporter on TV, then looked at Hachiman with a shocked expression.
Hachiman nodded, put down his bowl, and picked up his phone beside him.
He swiped his finger across the screen a few times, wanting to send a message to Renji.
The cursor blinked in the input window, but when the chat window opened, he didn’t know what to say.
“Did you see the news?”
No, wasn’t that obvious?
At this hour, Renji should have already watched the news, so asking more questions would be redundant, even though it was indeed a good performance.
“Something happened again.”
No, that wouldn’t work.
That was too flippant.
Renji might think he was a cold-hearted guy, and in any case, it was a classmate who had died, even if there was almost no interaction.
Hachiman stared at his phone screen for a few seconds, but finally flipped it over and slammed it down on the table, not sending anything back.
Even Hachiman himself didn’t realize that he completely considered Renji a friend and immediately thought of him whenever he had any thoughts.
“Tobe might not be the last victim.”
Last night, when he said that, it was just a guess; suddenly that thought surfaced in his mind.
But now that this idea had become an established fact, and if the police couldn’t find the killer immediately, a third victim might soon appear.
Two students in the same class had been killed one after another in a short period of time.
“Bro?”
At this moment, Komachi’s voice also carried a hint of anxiety.
After all, two people in her brother’s class had died in succession.
If it were her, she’d want to take a leave of absence.
“I’m fine.”
Hachiman quickly finished the remaining half of his miso soup in one gulp, then put the bowl in the kitchen sink and checked the related news on his phone.
When the time was right, Hachiman finally picked up his backpack and prepared to head out.
“I’m going to school first.”
“You’re not asking for leave? If it were Komachi, she’d already be taking leave. I’m sure the teacher would agree.”
Hachiman paused while changing his shoes at the entrance.
As he was leaving, Hachiman thought for a moment and decided it wasn’t necessary.
He couldn’t just let the killer be someone from their class and randomly choose a target from the class.
Then taking leave to avoid being chosen would be nonsense.
“Leave is useless.”
“I’m going.”
Hachiman laced up his shoes and opened the door.
The morning sunlight streamed through the doorway into the entrance hall, casting Hachiman’s shadow across the floor.
Behind him, Komachi’s voice called out, “Be careful on the road,” with a seriousness rarely heard in her usual tone.
On the way from the Hikigaya household to Sobu High School, Hachiman always rode his bike to and from school — it was faster.
While riding, he mentally organized the timeline and some clues about the case, treating it as a way to pass the time.
On Saturday night, Tobe died at home, stabbed multiple times, showing signs of beating and resistance, but no signs of forced entry.
Perhaps the killer had disguised himself as someone familiar or tried to pick the locks.
It wasn’t a murder for money; there were no signs of the apartment being ransacked in the report.
On Monday night, meaning yesterday, Ooka died in the storage room of his apartment, hanging from a pipe with his rugby ribbon, with multiple stab wounds to his chest.
But this time, there were signs of forced entry — either the lock had been picked or it had been opened by pretending to be someone familiar?
Between these two cases, there was only one day.
Just as Renji had expected, relying only on news reports didn’t give specific information — only the general situation.
Hachiman looked at the cherry blossoms by the roadside, which had completely fallen, their bare branches gently swaying in the morning breeze.
Hachiman looked at the countdown to the red light, pulled out his phone, and typed a few words in his notes.
“Tobe — Saturday.”
“Ooka — Monday.”
“Next — Wednesday?”
Hachiman recalled the detective novels he had read and some news reports.
In a typical serial murder case, the killer goes through a cooling-off period after each crime.
It’s specifically used to digest the excitement after the crime or to avoid concentrated police searches.
But now, it seemed the killer had no cooldown; this could be understood as his cooling-off period being the hours spent in a normal daily routine, using small, everyday moments to diminish the excitement of the crime.
“But this disappearance is too fast.”
Hachiman couldn’t help but think.
When the light turned green, Hachiman put his phone away.
Inside the convenience store, Hachiman was about to buy a can of MAX coffee when he noticed the morning news headline on the store’s TV.
“Series of Student Fatalities in Inage Ward, Chiba City?” — red background with white text scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
Serial killings.
The wording of this headline might not seem very pleasant, but for an ordinary second-year high school student, another fact was harder to digest than the wording.
Because it was happening in the same class he came to every day, with people he could name and see every day.
Not a stranger from a distant city or even a country from a newspaper, not a fictional character from a novel.
It was the same Tobe who had been laughing loudly in the hallway last week, patting Hayato Hayama on the shoulder, and Ooka, who was always running and shouting near the rugby field during PE class.
And when he woke up the next morning and turned on the TV, would he see a third name?
Maybe someone he knew well, someone from his class?
Hachiman tried to push that thought out of his head, but he couldn’t get rid of it.
It was like a grain of sand lodged in the folds of his mind — not painful, but itchy and always present.
At the gates of Chiba Municipal Sobu High School, everything was still the same as usual — the duty students were still standing at the gate, checking uniforms.
Morning practice for several sports clubs had ended.
Members in sportswear were walking back from the playground to the school building, soaked in sweat.
The late April wind blew, carrying away the moisture of dew evaporating from the grass.