Became the Academy Romantic Phantom Thief chapter 223

223 – Deduction Time

“Me?”

I moved my gaze along Sharon’s fingers and reached my chest.

Seeing her calmly nodding her head, she had all kinds of thoughts in her fleeting moment.

‘What does it mean to use me?’

Did you find out about my true identity?

No, judging from the previous reaction, that doesn’t make sense.

So you mean literally using me as bait? Isn’t it too brazen to ask for such a risky task?

“Can’t you escape with your magic?”

At that time, I was startled by her question that broke her thoughts.

“My magic…?”

“I saw it when I was sparring with Layered before. The figure suddenly disappeared and appeared from behind in an instant. Can you hide your face?”

“Ah, then.”

An old memory that barely comes to mind when you go back quite a long time ago.

Surely, at the beginning of the semester, the composition as Sharon explained unfolded. Thanks to this, she unintentionally draws the attention of the main character, Layered.

I never thought I’d still be remembering things from the past that I’d forgotten about. Could it be that you’ve been paying close attention to me since then?

If that’s not the case… Maybe he said it while thinking of the time he faced me when I was a phantom thief.

I keep having that kind of doubt in my head. Even though she already suspects the murderer on this ship, not me, as the thief. It was embarrassing to see myself trying to ignore and deny the obvious facts.

Let’s not think about useless things. Right now, it is difficult to focus exclusively on this case.

It was a time when I had to be alert that I could lose my life if I made the slightest mistake.

“Okay. Let’s try it.”

From noble mtl dot com

We first set up a specific strategy. For now, my invisibility magic can only be applied to myself.

In other words, it was unreasonable to make Sharon transparent and easily get out of the restaurant.

So another method was needed. As a result of putting our heads together and thinking about it, we were able to come up with the most rational strategy in the current situation.

First, I use magic to get out of the dining room through the open door. Then, as stealthily as possible, get a sailor uniform and change into a disguise.

After naturally pretending to be a sailor, he confidently walked back to the restaurant.

“What happened?”

“The captain ordered to bring the first witness to her, a female student. I will take you.”

“What? I hadn’t heard of that.”

“So I came down myself. Why don’t you go up and ask yourself? The captain seems very impatient. I wonder what his reaction will be.”

“Okay, so take me with you.”

Fortunately, I passed without any major problems. Originally, the most important thing in a situation like this is confidence.

Of course, it was not a reckless attempt without any prior preparation. Before executing the operation, I had carefully observed the crew members and grasped the atmosphere in advance.

As I pretended to be a sailor and took Sharon out, she followed me and whispered softly.

“The acting is natural.”

“Really? Maybe you have a talent I didn’t know about.”

After passing it as deftly as possible, we slipped off the path.

“You’d better keep the disguise. I need an excuse when I run into another sailor on patrol.”

“Where are you planning to go?”

I succeeded in sneaking out of the restaurant, but this was only the beginning, not the end.

From now on, it was my turn to conduct an independent investigation while remaining as inconspicuous as possible.

“As expected, we should definitely search the scene of the incident.”

“The security may be tight.”

“Let’s go down and think about it.”

Perhaps they are searching for the culprit in their own way, so they are going through the crime scene. We also have to go there to find clues, but we have to be careful because if we do something wrong, the sailors may find us and be accused of being criminals.

It was easier than expected to avoid the eyes of the patrolling crew, perhaps because the cruise was quite wide. When I heard moderate popularity, the flow continued even if I opened any room door and crouched in the corner.

“Hmm…”

“Why is that?”

“Something is strange.”

Is it simply because of the wide cruise?

Rather than that, what can I say… It feels like the sailors are just patrolling roughly?

If you are going around to find the culprit hiding under common sense, isn’t it normal to carefully look under the bed in the room?

There’s no way the culprit will come out on his own just because he’s wandering around the hallway.

When I told her my question, Sharon nodded her head.

“It sure is strange.”

“Did I lose my discipline? In fact, I just felt that way at the restaurant.”

Now is an obvious emergency. A killer is hiding on a ship that is isolated and can’t escape.

Of course, the sailors are in a situation where they have to turn on the light in their eyes and search for the culprit in order to protect their own lives.

But such a lax security system. At least, a password to identify friends or family is not an option, but a must.

Not to mention the fact that the culprit is not just an ordinary murderer, but the thief Raven.

It was basic common knowledge that phantom thieves were good at disguises and tricks. Still, it was quite strange to not have any suspicions about the unfamiliar sailor.

“For now, let’s keep going.”

“Yes.”

With our doubts put aside for a moment, we continued downstairs.

Contrary to expectations, the basement was not particularly heavily guarded. Rather, compared to other places, it even felt more relaxed.

I arrived at the underground warehouse with growing doubts.

The secret room was wide open, just like the first time I saw it. The only thing that has changed is that the body is gone.

“This makes no sense.”

Even if I could pass everything else on, I couldn’t understand how empty this secret room was.

In order to conduct an investigation, of course, you have to spread out around the crime scene. Because the decisive clues of all crimes have no choice but to remain at the scene.

Leaving the secret room like this was only interpreted as saying that no matter how much I thought about it, I had no will to catch the culprit.

Sharon stood in the center of the secret room and looked around her.

“No sign.”

“Huh?”

“There is no sign of the victim resisting or trying to steal the jewelry by force. This is a closed room, so there is no possibility that the victim guarding the entrance did not see the criminal.”

What she meant was simple.

“You mean the victim stayed still after facing the perpetrator?”

“Right. Someone who would not resist even if the victim, who was tasked with protecting the jewelry, saw someone coming here.”

There are only two people on this ship who are worthy of that.

“Let’s go up to the top.”

On the top floor of this ship, the bridge, was the captain’s office.

***

Ironically, the higher you go upstairs, the stricter the boundary becomes.

Criminals couldn’t even hide here anyway, but the crew was concentrated on the bridge.

The arrangement and movement are not to search for the culprit, but as if they are guarding a specific place.

The more we looked at it, the more confident our guesses became.

In front of the captain’s office, which was finally reached after struggling through an infiltration of a level of difficulty that is incomparable to that of the underground.

Just in time, two people who had been narrowed down as suspects were sitting face to face and talking.

“When will the culprit be caught…!?”

As the owner of the jewelry brushed it off with an uneasy expression, the captain replied while savoring the tea leisurely.

“Please wait a moment. My crew is diligently investigating, so sooner or later the culprit will be revealed.”

“You know what happens when that jewel disappears?! Not only me, but your necks will be blown away too!”

The captain opened his eyes at the threat, which was not particularly threatening.

“You speak straight. We were only playing the role of transporting jewels.”

“I will come and get out of my way…! Do you think that excuse will work?!”

“So, I told you from the beginning, right? If you’re worried, ask us to leave your jewelry. This kind of division happened because you believed in some strange bastard other than me. I didn’t like the fact that we put our ship’s uniform on a guy I saw for the first time. Tsk.”

It was unexpected. With just that brief sad talk, I was able to roughly guess how things were going.

Anyway, the corpse we found was not a crew member of the ship, but rather a guard brought in by the owner of the jewel. He wore a sailor uniform to avoid being noticed by others.

Thanks to that, I think I got the answer as to which of the two is the culprit.

If I could figure it out, of course Sharon would have come to the same conclusion.

The question is what to do next…

Just because you know the captain is the culprit doesn’t solve everything. Because now we are stuck on a boat floating in the middle of the sea.

Is it possible to end peacefully by recklessly subduing the captain and then revealing that he is the culprit?

On the contrary, there was a high possibility that an irreversible confusion would break out if we made a hasty move.

Then what should we do now?

At that time, Sharon spoke to me.