Hey! Say! JUMP Solves A Mystery - Chapter 6
Hey, guys! I'm finally updating Hey! Say! JUMP Solves A Mystery! ^^
I finally finished writing the end today, so you can count on the rest being posted soon!
Chapter 6: IMPOSSIBLE! We Get Rid Of the Suspects One By One
“You can’t be serious!” I exclaimed, the disbelief reflected in my eyes.
“Yeah,” agreed Yuya, his expression twisted in horror at Ryosuke’s willingness to accuse our juniors of murder. “You can’t seriously think that B.I.Shadow would murder the PV director! What would their motive be?”
Ryosuke furrowed his brow, deeply troubled. “I’m not sure what B.I.Shadow’s motive would be or even if they have one, but we can’t be so quick to eliminate them from suspicion. They were also not around during the time of the murder, remember? I know that it seems wrong, but before we find some hard evidence disproving any possible involvement from B.I.Shadow, we have to keep them as suspects at the back of our minds. As Sherlock Holmes would say, when you get rid of the impossible, what’s left is the truth.”
Everyone else nodded reluctantly, their eyes on the ground as they struggled with the reality that Ryosuke had just put forth. Even though I knew about the contention between B.I.Shadow and the PV director, I, myself, was still in doubt. More than anything, I did not want to believe that our good friends, whose support we’ve grown up with, were capable of such a horrible deed as ending someone’s life. I did not want to believe that our juniors would do anything that would take away their future, the future that had just barely begun.
They hadn’t even gotten a chance to debut yet.
“Dai-chan?”
I looked up, surprised that my name had been called. I found my gaze returned by Ryosuke. He must have noticed that I hadn’t nodded along with the others. He came over, putting a gentle hand on my arm, his compelling gaze never leaving me. “Dai-chan,” Ryosuke repeated, his voice just as gentle. “I know you are struggling on the inside. You have always been such a trusting person. However, I need you to promise me that you will at least keep an open mind, okay?”
I nodded hesitatingly, and replied, “Okay, I’ll try.”
Ryosuke smiled at me and I felt my heart lightened of some of its burden. “Thank you, Dai-chan,” he said simply, though there was much more meaning behind those words than could ever be articulated. Then, he turned his attention back to the rest of the group. “Okay, it’s almost nine. We should probably head back to the main part of the studio. Keep your eyes peeled during filming. There’s no telling what new clues might show up when we least expect it!”
* * *
When we arrived back on set, we were sullenly greeted by the other PV employees. The director’s death still hung over them like some low-lying fog. We were relatively surprised to see that the police were also on set, possibly to prevent any future deaths in case the director’s murderer turned out to be a serial killer. However, all of that was brushed aside as we gazed upon the bright orange room that would begin to feel like our prison for the next couple of hours. The former cheeriness and fun that we had associated with the set was gone. In its place, there was only mistrust thinly veiled by the need to finish working.
As the makeup and wardrobe people descended upon us like a flock of vultures after the dead, I noticed Liz standing off to one side by herself, looking rather dejected. I turned my head slightly to allow one of the hairstylists have better access to my disheveled mess of hair, and caught Hikaru’s eye. The BEST member pursed his lips worriedly and carefully extricated himself from the people around him and went over to Liz.
Interested in what Hikaru was trying to accomplish, I watched him approach Liz, probably saying gentle words with that joking tone of his to reassure her. Liz looked back at him with appreciation shining in her eyes…or perhaps those were tears; I couldn’t tell. Suddenly, she buried her head in Hikaru’s shoulder and the boy hesitatingly put his arms around her with a tender expression on his face. At this point, I looked away, shaking my head in amazement; this was the first time I had ever seen Hikaru act so shyly. Women really do make a big difference!
The others also seemed to have seen what was going on between Hikaru and Liz, as they were all giggling and whispering amongst themselves like gossipy schoolgirls. I shook my head again, this time at the others’ immaturity. When it came to the female species, sometimes, I could literally feel the maturity level of the room drop a couple billion degrees.
Just as I was about to comment on my friends’ silliness, I heard a voice say teasingly, “If you keep shaking your head like that, Dai-chan, it’s going to fall off, you know!”
I turned about abruptly, having not perceived Hikaru’s presence as he once again joined our group, and replied, “Seriously, Hikaru-kun, I had no idea that you had come back! You gave me a shock!”
Hikaru laughed openly and patted me on the head. “Chii’s right. You really are a space case, Dai-chan!”
I pouted outwardly, but inwardly, I knew that Hikaru was just joking as always. Just as I was going to playfully hit him over the head, I saw the corners of Hikaru’s mouth stretch outward in a smile that he couldn’t restrain. I looked at him in confusion and asked, “What’s going on, Hikaru-kun? What’s so funny?”
Grinning widely now, Hikaru answered, “I now know how to prove Liz-chan’s innocence!”
“You what?” I hissed, putting an arm around Hikaru and pulling him off to the side before the police could overhear what Hikaru was saying.
Hikaru declared triumphantly, but softly this time, “I know how to prove Liz-chan’s innocence now!”
“How?”
Hikaru leaned in conspiratorially. “Liz-chan is one of our makeup artists, right?” He watched as I nodded slowly in reply. “Well, remember when I had to pick up Liz-chan’s phone for her because she had makeup on her hands?”
“Yeah…What’s your point?” I asked.
Hikaru grinned. “Just now, when I was comforting Liz-chan, I realized something! If Liz-chan had committed the murder, there would have been traces of makeup on the body or at the scene of the crime, right? But, there wasn’t any!”
I frowned, my eyebrows joining together. “I’m not sure that entirely justifies Liz-chan’s innocence. There was plenty of time in between for her to wash the makeup off, wasn’t there? The body was also found in a bathroom, so she could have used the water in there to do it,” I replied slowly, trying not to sound too accusatory or make Hikaru angry. I saw Hikaru’s face fall slightly as his hopes sank.
“Not exactly,” said a voice.
At this newcomer’s voice, Hikaru and I looked up in surprise to see a skinny man with a navy blue cap standing behind me. His matching uniform had the words for “Forensics” sprawled over his back in a bold yellow font. “What Yaotome-san said can technically stand as circumstantial evidence against Liz-san. Makeup is difficult to get off of any surface, whether it be the scene of the crime or the cadaver itself, especially if you only have water at your disposal. I was the forensics technician who checked both of those out, and I can say with complete confidence that there was no makeup anywhere in the vicinity.”
With that said, the skinny forensics man walked away, while I stared on in disbelief. “Wow, that was convenient,” I muttered, as Hikaru continued to chatter on about how relieved he was now that there was proof that Liz was innocent. Lifting my head in a silent act of thanking whatever supernatural power had brought us the conveniently placed forensics technician, I gave a sigh of relief. It seemed that finally, after all our work insofar on the case, we were finally making progress! If there was no way for Liz to have been the suspect, then that meant that our list of four suspects has been narrowed down to three! I almost felt like jumping in the air in glee.
Of course, that’s only if B.I.Shadow wasn’t the murderer.
I mentally cursed myself as this thought wormed itself back into my head. No. There were only three suspects left, and B.I.Shadow wasn’t one of them. They couldn’t have done it! They couldn’t have!
As the PV director’s stand-in called us over to the set to finish filming the music video, I felt Hikaru pinch my cheek playfully - he must have noticed my troubled expression - and I felt myself relax a little. Everything was going to be okay. I had my friends with me, and that was all I needed. We could do anything, be it solve mysteries or filming what now seemed like a cursed PV, as long as we had each other.
* * *
“Okay, everyone in Hey! Say! JUMP, you may have your break!”
We all felt ourselves buckle inward as we collapsed where we stood. Keeping up our pep in an environment where everyone else seemed openly hostile was grueling work! It wasn’t just the matter of fixing our plastic smiles in place, we also had to put in effort to create an atmosphere through the subtleties in our body language in which everything was all rainbows and sparkles, when deep inside, we just wanted to get the filming over with and continue with our investigation.
As I fumbled around for my bottle of water on the table above me, I felt Chinen’s body drape across my lower half. I looked down and saw Chinen’s flushed and sweat drenched face stare back up at me. Chinen’s legs were sticking out at odd angles as his moon shoes weighed his feet down painfully. I hurriedly bent over him and unstrapped his shoes, while Chinen sighed in appreciation.
“Thank you, Dai-chan,” he murmured.
I shook my head. “It’s fine, Chii. We all have to look out for each other.” I brushed some of the little acrobat’s sweaty hair out of his face. “Are you okay? You look exhausted.”
Chinen laughed faintly, his strength not allowing him to do anything that required any more energy. “Yeah, I’m alright. I’m just tired, that’s all.” He lifted one now liberated leg in the air. “And it’s all because of those stupid shoes! Moon shoes are a lot heavier than they look!”
I laughed, throwing my head back. “Yeah, they should be called ‘weight shoes’!”
Chinen aimed a half-hearted punch at me, but I easily ducked out of reach. I had by now come to realize how lucky I was to have gotten the toy car as my “pastime”. All I had to do was sit around, whirling my head back and forth as if the little plastic toy car was zooming around in front of me. At least I hadn’t had to lug around extra weights strapped around my feet and launch myself into the air with them for long periods of time. As Chinen let out a little whimper of frustration, I leaned in and allowed him to land a punch on my arm. Chinen’s answering noise of satisfaction let me know that I had done the right thing.
Just as I was about to push Chinen gently off of my lower half, which was beginning to lose feeling, I distinctly heard Detective Yoshida say something in a triumphant tone. I pricked my ears up and sure enough, the detective exclaimed, “Look! There it is! I was sure I saw it!”
I snuck a look to see what Detective Yoshida was looking at. The detective and two other policemen were currently bent over a bank of monitors, apparently checking the tapes from the day before. “Look!” Detective Yoshida exclaimed, gesticulating at the one of the screens wildly. “At the time of the murder, Tanaka Natsumi-san was on set! There she is, adjusting the lights for the PV!”
Upon hearing this, Chinen and I traded shocked looks. I mouthed a “No way!”, and Chinen replied with an “I know, right?”, all traces of tiredness gone. The little acrobat scrambled up from his place on top of me and ran off in search of the others to share what we had just overheard. I carefully shook out my legs, wincing at the pangs that came with them falling asleep, and picked myself off of the floor to follow Chinen.
It seemed way too soon, but already, we had eliminated two of our four suspects.
---
I hope you liked this very revealing chapter! ^^
This way to Chapter 7~
I finally finished writing the end today, so you can count on the rest being posted soon!
Chapter 6: IMPOSSIBLE! We Get Rid Of the Suspects One By One
“You can’t be serious!” I exclaimed, the disbelief reflected in my eyes.
“Yeah,” agreed Yuya, his expression twisted in horror at Ryosuke’s willingness to accuse our juniors of murder. “You can’t seriously think that B.I.Shadow would murder the PV director! What would their motive be?”
Ryosuke furrowed his brow, deeply troubled. “I’m not sure what B.I.Shadow’s motive would be or even if they have one, but we can’t be so quick to eliminate them from suspicion. They were also not around during the time of the murder, remember? I know that it seems wrong, but before we find some hard evidence disproving any possible involvement from B.I.Shadow, we have to keep them as suspects at the back of our minds. As Sherlock Holmes would say, when you get rid of the impossible, what’s left is the truth.”
Everyone else nodded reluctantly, their eyes on the ground as they struggled with the reality that Ryosuke had just put forth. Even though I knew about the contention between B.I.Shadow and the PV director, I, myself, was still in doubt. More than anything, I did not want to believe that our good friends, whose support we’ve grown up with, were capable of such a horrible deed as ending someone’s life. I did not want to believe that our juniors would do anything that would take away their future, the future that had just barely begun.
They hadn’t even gotten a chance to debut yet.
“Dai-chan?”
I looked up, surprised that my name had been called. I found my gaze returned by Ryosuke. He must have noticed that I hadn’t nodded along with the others. He came over, putting a gentle hand on my arm, his compelling gaze never leaving me. “Dai-chan,” Ryosuke repeated, his voice just as gentle. “I know you are struggling on the inside. You have always been such a trusting person. However, I need you to promise me that you will at least keep an open mind, okay?”
I nodded hesitatingly, and replied, “Okay, I’ll try.”
Ryosuke smiled at me and I felt my heart lightened of some of its burden. “Thank you, Dai-chan,” he said simply, though there was much more meaning behind those words than could ever be articulated. Then, he turned his attention back to the rest of the group. “Okay, it’s almost nine. We should probably head back to the main part of the studio. Keep your eyes peeled during filming. There’s no telling what new clues might show up when we least expect it!”
* * *
When we arrived back on set, we were sullenly greeted by the other PV employees. The director’s death still hung over them like some low-lying fog. We were relatively surprised to see that the police were also on set, possibly to prevent any future deaths in case the director’s murderer turned out to be a serial killer. However, all of that was brushed aside as we gazed upon the bright orange room that would begin to feel like our prison for the next couple of hours. The former cheeriness and fun that we had associated with the set was gone. In its place, there was only mistrust thinly veiled by the need to finish working.
As the makeup and wardrobe people descended upon us like a flock of vultures after the dead, I noticed Liz standing off to one side by herself, looking rather dejected. I turned my head slightly to allow one of the hairstylists have better access to my disheveled mess of hair, and caught Hikaru’s eye. The BEST member pursed his lips worriedly and carefully extricated himself from the people around him and went over to Liz.
Interested in what Hikaru was trying to accomplish, I watched him approach Liz, probably saying gentle words with that joking tone of his to reassure her. Liz looked back at him with appreciation shining in her eyes…or perhaps those were tears; I couldn’t tell. Suddenly, she buried her head in Hikaru’s shoulder and the boy hesitatingly put his arms around her with a tender expression on his face. At this point, I looked away, shaking my head in amazement; this was the first time I had ever seen Hikaru act so shyly. Women really do make a big difference!
The others also seemed to have seen what was going on between Hikaru and Liz, as they were all giggling and whispering amongst themselves like gossipy schoolgirls. I shook my head again, this time at the others’ immaturity. When it came to the female species, sometimes, I could literally feel the maturity level of the room drop a couple billion degrees.
Just as I was about to comment on my friends’ silliness, I heard a voice say teasingly, “If you keep shaking your head like that, Dai-chan, it’s going to fall off, you know!”
I turned about abruptly, having not perceived Hikaru’s presence as he once again joined our group, and replied, “Seriously, Hikaru-kun, I had no idea that you had come back! You gave me a shock!”
Hikaru laughed openly and patted me on the head. “Chii’s right. You really are a space case, Dai-chan!”
I pouted outwardly, but inwardly, I knew that Hikaru was just joking as always. Just as I was going to playfully hit him over the head, I saw the corners of Hikaru’s mouth stretch outward in a smile that he couldn’t restrain. I looked at him in confusion and asked, “What’s going on, Hikaru-kun? What’s so funny?”
Grinning widely now, Hikaru answered, “I now know how to prove Liz-chan’s innocence!”
“You what?” I hissed, putting an arm around Hikaru and pulling him off to the side before the police could overhear what Hikaru was saying.
Hikaru declared triumphantly, but softly this time, “I know how to prove Liz-chan’s innocence now!”
“How?”
Hikaru leaned in conspiratorially. “Liz-chan is one of our makeup artists, right?” He watched as I nodded slowly in reply. “Well, remember when I had to pick up Liz-chan’s phone for her because she had makeup on her hands?”
“Yeah…What’s your point?” I asked.
Hikaru grinned. “Just now, when I was comforting Liz-chan, I realized something! If Liz-chan had committed the murder, there would have been traces of makeup on the body or at the scene of the crime, right? But, there wasn’t any!”
I frowned, my eyebrows joining together. “I’m not sure that entirely justifies Liz-chan’s innocence. There was plenty of time in between for her to wash the makeup off, wasn’t there? The body was also found in a bathroom, so she could have used the water in there to do it,” I replied slowly, trying not to sound too accusatory or make Hikaru angry. I saw Hikaru’s face fall slightly as his hopes sank.
“Not exactly,” said a voice.
At this newcomer’s voice, Hikaru and I looked up in surprise to see a skinny man with a navy blue cap standing behind me. His matching uniform had the words for “Forensics” sprawled over his back in a bold yellow font. “What Yaotome-san said can technically stand as circumstantial evidence against Liz-san. Makeup is difficult to get off of any surface, whether it be the scene of the crime or the cadaver itself, especially if you only have water at your disposal. I was the forensics technician who checked both of those out, and I can say with complete confidence that there was no makeup anywhere in the vicinity.”
With that said, the skinny forensics man walked away, while I stared on in disbelief. “Wow, that was convenient,” I muttered, as Hikaru continued to chatter on about how relieved he was now that there was proof that Liz was innocent. Lifting my head in a silent act of thanking whatever supernatural power had brought us the conveniently placed forensics technician, I gave a sigh of relief. It seemed that finally, after all our work insofar on the case, we were finally making progress! If there was no way for Liz to have been the suspect, then that meant that our list of four suspects has been narrowed down to three! I almost felt like jumping in the air in glee.
Of course, that’s only if B.I.Shadow wasn’t the murderer.
I mentally cursed myself as this thought wormed itself back into my head. No. There were only three suspects left, and B.I.Shadow wasn’t one of them. They couldn’t have done it! They couldn’t have!
As the PV director’s stand-in called us over to the set to finish filming the music video, I felt Hikaru pinch my cheek playfully - he must have noticed my troubled expression - and I felt myself relax a little. Everything was going to be okay. I had my friends with me, and that was all I needed. We could do anything, be it solve mysteries or filming what now seemed like a cursed PV, as long as we had each other.
* * *
“Okay, everyone in Hey! Say! JUMP, you may have your break!”
We all felt ourselves buckle inward as we collapsed where we stood. Keeping up our pep in an environment where everyone else seemed openly hostile was grueling work! It wasn’t just the matter of fixing our plastic smiles in place, we also had to put in effort to create an atmosphere through the subtleties in our body language in which everything was all rainbows and sparkles, when deep inside, we just wanted to get the filming over with and continue with our investigation.
As I fumbled around for my bottle of water on the table above me, I felt Chinen’s body drape across my lower half. I looked down and saw Chinen’s flushed and sweat drenched face stare back up at me. Chinen’s legs were sticking out at odd angles as his moon shoes weighed his feet down painfully. I hurriedly bent over him and unstrapped his shoes, while Chinen sighed in appreciation.
“Thank you, Dai-chan,” he murmured.
I shook my head. “It’s fine, Chii. We all have to look out for each other.” I brushed some of the little acrobat’s sweaty hair out of his face. “Are you okay? You look exhausted.”
Chinen laughed faintly, his strength not allowing him to do anything that required any more energy. “Yeah, I’m alright. I’m just tired, that’s all.” He lifted one now liberated leg in the air. “And it’s all because of those stupid shoes! Moon shoes are a lot heavier than they look!”
I laughed, throwing my head back. “Yeah, they should be called ‘weight shoes’!”
Chinen aimed a half-hearted punch at me, but I easily ducked out of reach. I had by now come to realize how lucky I was to have gotten the toy car as my “pastime”. All I had to do was sit around, whirling my head back and forth as if the little plastic toy car was zooming around in front of me. At least I hadn’t had to lug around extra weights strapped around my feet and launch myself into the air with them for long periods of time. As Chinen let out a little whimper of frustration, I leaned in and allowed him to land a punch on my arm. Chinen’s answering noise of satisfaction let me know that I had done the right thing.
Just as I was about to push Chinen gently off of my lower half, which was beginning to lose feeling, I distinctly heard Detective Yoshida say something in a triumphant tone. I pricked my ears up and sure enough, the detective exclaimed, “Look! There it is! I was sure I saw it!”
I snuck a look to see what Detective Yoshida was looking at. The detective and two other policemen were currently bent over a bank of monitors, apparently checking the tapes from the day before. “Look!” Detective Yoshida exclaimed, gesticulating at the one of the screens wildly. “At the time of the murder, Tanaka Natsumi-san was on set! There she is, adjusting the lights for the PV!”
Upon hearing this, Chinen and I traded shocked looks. I mouthed a “No way!”, and Chinen replied with an “I know, right?”, all traces of tiredness gone. The little acrobat scrambled up from his place on top of me and ran off in search of the others to share what we had just overheard. I carefully shook out my legs, wincing at the pangs that came with them falling asleep, and picked myself off of the floor to follow Chinen.
It seemed way too soon, but already, we had eliminated two of our four suspects.
---
I hope you liked this very revealing chapter! ^^
This way to Chapter 7~