Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 3===

“What a pain.”

It was 10 in the morning as Frenda breathed a heavy sigh.

She had been like this ever since leaving the peaceful world and joining the others in the shadows.

She had been doing nothing but complain on this sunny morning.

“In the end, is that all the evidence you have? If you know we probably aren’t gonna find anything, then could you not call me in!? Ugh, my sister’s 50-meter dash is startiiiiing.”

Complain all she wanted, a job was a job.

It had only been three hours since discovery, but the yellow tape had already been removed.

Was that because it was being treated as a suicide with no sign of foul play?

“By the way, don’t you have to compete, Mugino? You’re the Level 5 representing your school. In the end, shouldn’t you be changing into athletic bloomers, tying on a headband, grabbing a baton, and running with all your might?”

There was a “bfh!!” of escaping air.

Mugino glared over at Kinuhata, who made sure to be looking somewhere else.

“I don’t like to make official appearances cause of idiots like that.”

Frenda didn’t respond to that low, brooding comment.

But she did speak while crouching on the ground playing at forensic investigation. With her head drooping.

She must have really wanted to see her sister running in athletic bloomers.

“We’re not going to find any new evidence. Even if it was ruled a suicide, it would have been in the public news. In the end, I’m sure Anti-Skill already did all the basic stuff.”

“What about the nearby security cameras?”

“Anti-Skill definitely checked those.”

So if this was a murder disguised as a suicide, the murderer must have been confident they couldn’t be caught by those ordinary methods. Then what was that confidence based on? Where was their secret loophole located?

Track suit girl Takitsubo swept her blank gaze side to side.

The passersby were a motley crowd. In addition to the track suits and gym clothes were a cluster of girls in school swimsuits. They may have had a swimming event at an indoor pool. Everyone displayed a bright smile and showed no particular sign of stopping here, so they likely weren’t here to steal a look. They may not have even known this was the site of a suicide(?).

A distinctive tone sounded as several children watched something on a single phone. They appeared to be watching a streaming quiz show.

Takitsubo looked to them and then expressionlessly narrowed her eyes a bit.

“Mugino, this place might be below an overpass, but it still gets a lot of traffic. Foot and car traffic.”

“So? That’s probably why the place was opened back up so soon.”

“The body was found three hours ago, which would mean shortly before 7 AM. Even during the Daihaseisai, the students will gather at their schools in the mornings and the parents from outside will be out early competing for the best spots on the schoolyards. You could call that rush hour. It wouldn’t have been as bad as the train stations, but there must have been even more traffic here than there is now.”

“What’s your point?”

“With so many eyes around, it would have been difficult to hang a struggling person without anyone noticing.”

The four exchanged a glance.

When disguising a murder as a suicide, nothing would be more foolish than being spotted by a crowd in the moment you set up the disguise.

Something didn’t add up.

“But there super weren’t any witness reports, were there?”

“Which means that’s where the trick lies,” readily stated Takitsubo. “I wonder if a small accident happened in this area near the estimated time of death. 10 or 20 minutes would be enough. If the overall flow of foot and car traffic was altered, there wouldn’t be any witnesses.”