CHAPTER 4: The Rainbow-Colored Past
The group makes a cursory examination of the director's corpse and Nishinosono makes the following observations: (1) his body is still warm, which means he hasn't been dead for long; (2) he is stabbed with a knife on the back of his neck, which means he didn't do it himself and that his killer is someone he knew; (3) the helicopter radio is destroyed, which means the police have not yet been contacted; (4) since there are only ways to get to the rooftop and they didn't meet anyone at the elevator, the killer must have used the other door and he must still be in the lab.
The group goes back to the main room where they check the security logs on the two doors leading to the rooftop. The logs reveal that only Yamane has used the elevator to the rooftop but the time does not match the timeline of the murder. The other door has not been accessed since yesterday. This leads them to conclude that the Deborah program is not entirely perfect. Next they examine Magata's room through Yamane's voice and palm biometric data. It is established that the door can be opened from the inside the same way using Magata's voice and palm biometric data. Once inside the room, they observe that Magata has a receiving room although she never sees anyone, her library does not contain a single work of hers and that she appears to have been working on metal.
As they explore the room further for more clues, they come upon a closed door that is locked from inside and someone with Magata's voice asks them who they are. Yamane immediately identifies himself and asks for the door to open. However, it revealed that the voice belongs to a robot that Magata made and named Michiru. The room also hides a large lego British guard, a box of legos, a teddy bear and three pieces of party balloons. Magata's bedroom appears neat as though nothing horrible happened in it. They find nothing there, not even Magata's limbs, which makes Saikawa wonder about a trash chute in the room. However, the chute turns out to be too small.
Next, they check Magata's desktop computer and they find out that Magata has designed a new platform, Red Magic ver. 6 when the lab is still using ver. 4. An entry on her calendar from the day before contains the mysterious phrase: "Everything becomes F." They also find a text file that contains what apparently are the last words of Magata and her other personalities.
Later, Nishinosono and Saikawa check out a room in Magata's apartment that contains the single window. Saikawa mulls over the meaning of "Everything becomes F" while Nishinosono wonders about the wedding dress that Magata's corpse is wearing. Although they find a sewing machine in Magata's room, the wedding dress was bought three years ago. The wedding dress leads to a talk about dolls, which reminds Nishinosono about Magata's saying that a doll murdered her parents. However, doll seems to represent Magata's personalities, Magata also revealed in her conversation with Nishinosono that Magata is the only one who knows about her parents, making her the only suspect in her parents' murder.
In a flashback, the director is revealed sitting in a hotel room with a drink in hand. He talks about hearing Magata alone in the bathroom, talking to one of her personalities. The persona appears to have already slept with the director and Magata is asking her advice on what she's going to do, which is to sleep with the director, too. When Magata finally steps out of the shower, the director tries to tell her to stop but Magata throws herself on him.
COMMENTS:
Alright so now we have two bodies and we're all assuming that the killer is one of these characters inside the lab. So far the characters that have been fleshed out are Yamane and the director's wife.
Yamane is implicated because, being the vice director, he is the one guy, save the director himself who is already dead, with the highest level of access in the lab. He is also the only person who used the door leading to the rooftop. As for motive, his being vice-director to a dead director is plenty of motive. Yet, our intrepid investigators do not seem to consider him a suspect. Perhaps, because Yamane has been with them from the moment they arrived at the lab and so on. He hasn't really left our investigor's side, which diverts suspicion from him.
Our next suspect is the director's wife. We don't know much about her except that she seems to be taking her husband's gruesome murder very well. She's baking cookies and exchanging gossip about Magata's multiple personality disorder. Her motive is of course that of an avenging wife who finds out that her husband has been cheating on her with a kid genius. But there seems to be no indication whatsoever that she knows about Magata's affair with the director. Besides she doesn't appear to be smart enough to be able to pull off such a murder.
As a subplot, we are also trying to solve the murder of Magata's parents fifteen years ago. Magata is the prime suspect but she cryptically told Nishinosono that a doll did it. Incidentally, the latest murders may also involve a doll, Michiru, who is one of Magata's personalities.
Some nitpicking about the show: it is a leap for Nishinosono to assume that the police were never contacted just because the radio is destroyed. There's no showing that the director didn't already make the call and then got murdered. Likewise, I don't remember how they end up concluding that Magata was murdered only a few minutes before the director's murder. Sure, it narrows down the timeline and is a plot device to ensure that the killer remains in the building. But if Magata has only been dead a few minutes or hours, why is Nishinosono covering her nose when she checks the corpse?
It appears that Magata is the person who designed Red Magic, the program that controls Deborah security system, and that she is able to freely move about the lab. Yet, somehow I had the impression that Magata is supposed to be a prisoner? What kind of prisoner has freedom to get in and out with her prison and tinker with prison's security?
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