"Ah!?"
A startled scream suddenly rang out from inside the villa, and the next moment, a slightly plump man burst through the door and rushed out.
He quickly knelt beside the body, placing his hand on its neck. It was cold as ice, the body completely frozen. The man had clearly been dead for a long time.
The plump man turned sharply and shouted, "Don't come any closer!"
His words caused the others who had followed behind him to freeze in place.
"It's no use. Mr. Hamano has been dead for some time."
He scanned the people behind him, their expressions grim, then turned back to the body.
"Besides, if you step any closer, you'll disturb the scene."
"What does that mean?"
In the end, most of the people here were ordinary. Faced with such a sudden situation, their minds were under heavy strain, and they couldn't immediately grasp what was happening.
The plump man pointed to the snow-covered ground and the area surrounding the body.
"Mr. Hamano's body is ten meters away from the villa. Before we ran over, there weren't any footprints in the snow."
"I was the only one who reached the body."
"In short, this is an impossible crime."
The others finally took notice of the scene outside.
Just as the man said, only one person was near the corpse. Other than his footprints, there was just one set of tracks around the body.
The snow was too clean. So clean it didn't look like something natural.
"On the snow, so pristine it had almost no disturbance, a body suddenly appeared. There's no heavy piling or drag marks around it either, meaning the body wasn't thrown."
"In simple terms, this isn't something an ordinary person could pull off."
Just then, a red-haired girl leaning casually against the villa's door, standing at the very back of the crowd, added with a calm voice.
"What's the condition of the body?"
The plump man examined it again. The purplish-blue ligature marks on the neck were very obvious, indicating asphyxiation by strangulation. Apart from the neck, the clothes were neat, and there were no signs of a struggle.
"There are clear ligature marks. He was strangled to death. No other visible wounds."
"Ligature marks… that means this was done by someone close. If the killer wasn't someone the victim trusted, he wouldn't have allowed them to get close. But because it was strangulation, even we girls could've done it."
The red-haired girl calmly included herself among the potential suspects.
The atmosphere grew heavier.
However, after making her point, the girl shifted her gaze toward the open snowy field with a hint of doubt.
Strange… why do I feel like we're being watched?
The plump man slowly backed away, retracing his steps, using his own footprints.
The others followed suit, carefully retreating into the villa.
In the alternate dimension, Chika was watching in spectator mode, silently observing everyone's reactions.
Though it was only for a brief moment, she had already completed her observation and captured the most crucial, abnormal behavior.
"The culprit is the woman with the mole at the corner of her mouth."
She exited spectator mode as she spoke. Her once still eyes began to ripple again.
"Everyone else reacted normally, but that woman… her reaction wasn't fear. It was joy."
"In that kind of situation, only the murderer would feel joy. That proves her resentment toward the deceased ran deep. My judgment is that it was an act of revenge or something similar."
Her analysis stunned those around her.
"So fast."
"Hehe~"
Chika happily accepted the praise.
"Because I can see auras, I can discern someone's emotions through their Astral Body. In such shocking circumstances, it's even easier to identify a person's true state of mind."
"That red-haired girl… she seems to have noticed us."
Chika also noticed it. She hadn't expected anyone to be aware of their presence in the alternate dimension.
"Koizumi Akako. A person with special abilities."
Ren had already noticed the girl standing at the back and immediately identified her.
"Koizumi Akako... Ah, she's the one you mentioned before, Ren."
Chika remembered. Back at the Suzuki Zaibatsu banquet, Ren had brought up her name.
She quickly recalled seeing a girl in a red dress that day, a very striking figure.
Her thoughts immediately shifted to the man who had rushed out earlier.
"Ren, was that guy just now Kaito Kid? The one we saw before?"
Being able to see auras meant being able to see through appearances. Spiritual vision could easily expose a simple disguise.
The man who had rushed forward... the internal organs in his Astral Body didn't match his external features.
His hidden emotions also carried a trace of sorrow.
"It's him."
Ren nodded.
"His presence here is probably related to this case."
"As for Koizumi Akako, she's also good at divination. She must've predicted something about Kaito Kid, which is why she came along."
"Though we're in an alternate dimension, she likely sensed something. She shouldn't be able to detect our presence, but her perception is sharp enough to sense our gaze."
A gaze could be detected, but existence itself was harder to grasp.
After all, this was an alternate dimension. No matter how strong Koizumi Akako's abilities were, they couldn't affect the dimensional plane.
Ren knew her powers leaned toward divination, charm, potion-making, and memory alteration. None of these allowed her to breach spatial boundaries.
"This is an interesting situation. Judging from the scene, though, he didn't manage to stop what happened."
"That woman's act of revenge probably wasn't something Kaito Kid wanted to see."
Ren didn't care to understand what hatred had driven the woman to commit murder.
Whether she would be apprehended or not, that was Kaito Kid's decision to make.
(To be continued.)