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The movements of the three people finally attracted the attention of several detectives in the room. Two of them turned around and were surprised when they saw Keiko Hatoyama.
But before they could say anything, Hatoyama Keiko raised her hand to stop them.
She shook her head slightly, then stood firm and walked into the room step by step. During this process, her eyes never left the young man with his back to her in the middle of the room.
"By the way, have you seen enough, kid?"
Next to the boy stood a male detective who looked like his superior. He also did not notice Keiko Hatoyama approaching from behind. He raised his hand to light a cigarette for himself and glanced impatiently at the boy squatting next to the dead body.
"Really? It was because you said you were an assistant working at a nearby detective agency that I made an exception and allowed you to take a look at the scene... I was hoping you could provide some clues, but you ended up just staring at the corpse..."
After the police officer finished speaking, the boy still did not react at all. He just squatted there quietly, looking down at the female corpse lying on the mattress.
The teenager's attitude made the officer even more upset.
"Okay kid, don't stay here if you can't find any clues. The police won't blame you. Go home quickly."
"This was not a crime of passion, this was a planned murder."
Suddenly, the boy spoke.
His voice was very low, without any extra emotion in his tone, like a cold machine.
To be honest, Vermouth doesn't actually like this way of speaking.
"Huh? Have you found a clue?" the police officer asked curiously.
"The deceased had the habit of reading newspapers during his lifetime."
The boy did not answer the police officer directly. He still half-knelt in front of the deceased and spoke in that flat voice.
"And it was very frequent. He would buy new newspapers almost every day. The murderer probably learned about this habit of the deceased through a period of secret observation. He disguised himself as a newspaper seller, deceived the deceased into opening the door, and finally opened the door. Kill them.”
"Interesting guess, where's the evidence?"
"There is a pile of brand new newspapers at the entrance of this house. They cannot be the deceased's because he was financially strapped. Even if he had the habit of reading newspapers, he would not waste money to buy such a large pile of newspapers.
Moreover, according to another habit of the deceased, after reading the newspaper, she would cut out the job recruitment information in the current issue of the newspaper and keep it.
Therefore, the pile of brand new and intact newspapers placed in the entrance could only belong to the murderer."
Although he was somewhat skeptical as to why the teenager knew the deceased's habits so clearly, the police officer took out a small notebook and wrote down the key points of the teenager's words.
"What about the murderer's motive? Have you found any clues, kid?"
"Eye."
The boy finally moved. He raised his hand and pointed to the location of the female corpse's eyes.
Her eyes were dug out.
Where the eyeballs should have been, there were only two creepy bloody holes.
"The murderer's purpose was to dig out the victim's eyes." The boy's tone was calm.
"Gouge out your eyes? What does that mean?" The police officer seemed unable to understand this sentence.
Without answering him, the boy began to reconstruct the scene on his own.
"After the murderer tricked the deceased into opening the door by pretending to be a newspaper seller, he was worried that her struggle would attract attention from the people around her, so he did not kill her immediately. Instead, he covered her mouth and forcibly dragged her into the room where we are now."
As he spoke, the young man raised his finger and pointed at the blood marks around the female corpse's mouth that were left by scratches from his fingernails.
"The murderer then used his physical strength to hold the victim down, pressed his knee against her back to suppress her resistance, and then put a rope that he had prepared in advance around her neck, strangling her to death bit by bit from behind."
The boy moved his finger again and pointed at the extremely obvious marks of strangulation on the neck of the female corpse.
"Finally, after the victim had completely died, the murderer dug out the victim's eyes with his fingers."
Around the empty eye sockets of the female corpse, there were indeed tiny crescent-shaped scars that looked like they were scratched by human fingernails.
"But why did the murderer take the victim's eyes?"
Chapter 364: The Youth's Fragility Under the Calmness
"But why did the murderer take the dead man's eyes?"
It was still snowing outside, and in the cold room, the police officer couldn't help but ask.
Hearing his question, the boy was silent for a while, then he slowly stood up.
"Because the eyes of the deceased... are very beautiful." When saying this, the boy's originally flat voice finally showed a slight change.
"very beautiful?"
The boy turned his head and looked at the police officer next to him.
It was also at this time that Vermouth finally saw the boy's appearance.
He looked to be two or three years older than her, and had a very handsome appearance, so handsome that he should be able to disguise himself as a pretty girl with just some makeup.
Of course, what attracted Vermouth's attention at that time was not the boy's appearance, but his eyes.
Those were a pair of very beautiful pure purple pupils.
【so beautiful. 】
This was the first time that Vermouth had seen pupils of this color, so she subconsciously sighed in her heart.
The only slight flaw is that there is a lack of light in the boy's eyes.
His eyes were just like his low, flat voice, lacking the spirituality that should have been there. They looked extremely gloomy, destroying the beauty in them.
"The deceased's pupils were purple." Looking at the police officer, the boy spoke word by word.
【Purple?】
Suddenly, Vermouth realized something.
The pupils of the deceased were purple, and so were the pupils of the boy. Moreover, the boy knew the deceased so well that he even knew some of his living habits...
Could it be that……
Vermouth stared at the boy blankly and subconsciously raised her hand to cover her mouth.
At the same time, the detectives in the room seemed to react at this moment.
"Little boy, you, you and her..." The police officer looked at the boy in disbelief, stuttering.
Facing everyone's gaze, the boy's expression remained unchanged.
“My name is Shirakawa Kiyoshi, and I’m a detective assistant working part-time at a nearby detective agency.
The deceased is my mother."
When the boy said this, his tone was extremely calm, the kind of calmness that Vermouth could not understand.
She couldn't imagine that a normal human being, after encountering such a thing, could so calmly analyze the cause of death of his or her loved one, and then so calmly elaborate on it, and finally so calmly reveal the relationship between them...
Is this person... a monster? Or a real machine?
However, the next moment, Vermouth overturned all the labels she had arbitrarily attached to the boy.
When the boy turned to look at the police officer, he finally saw Keiko Hatoyama who had been standing quietly behind him.
At this moment, there was no more panic in Keiko Hatoyama's eyes. She just stood quietly behind him, looking at him gently, with a hint of sadness deep in her eyes.
The two looked at each other, and the expression on the boy's face finally changed.
He seemed to have been completely unprepared for the appearance of Hatoyama Keiko, and a look of extreme surprise appeared on his face.
From this moment on, his originally calm and peaceful state collapsed in an instant at an extremely fast speed.
"Keiko..."
Tears flowed uncontrollably down his cheeks. The boy stared blankly at Keiko Hatoyama in front of him. He opened his mouth, choked for a long time, and finally uttered only those few words in a crying voice.
"She's dead..."
Keiko Hatoyama said nothing, but walked forward and gently hugged the boy.
The boy was not heartless. He just hid his inner feelings deep inside and only expressed them to people close to him.
Time seemed to be quiet at this moment. Vermouth stood quietly at the door of the room, watching the two of them.
Now she finally understood why Keiko Hatoyama was so flustered before...
This was the first time Vermouth and Shirakawa Kiyoshi met.
But strictly speaking, this was not a very good first encounter.
Not only because the scene of their first meeting was extremely sad, but also because this time only Vermouth knew Shirakawa Kiyoshi, but Shirakawa Kiyoshi had not yet known her.
That day, after Karasuma Renya and the head of the Hatoyama family discussed matters, Vermouth was taken back to the United States.
She had no idea what happened after that. She didn't know what happened to Keiko Hatoyama and Kiyoshi Shirakawa, nor did she know whether the vicious murderer had been caught.
At that time, she was still feeling regretful and sad that she had to leave so suddenly, and she didn't realize that her life from now on was actually tied closely to these two people...
And everything changed three years later.
Three years later, Vermouth officially entered high school. Although she was not a super genius with extraordinary intelligence, her grades had always been among the best in school since she was a child, and she had won various awards in the school.
If she continues on this trajectory, she should be able to enter one of the top universities in the United States based on her grades alone, and after obtaining a shining diploma, she will inherit the Karasuma family's business step by step.
However, fate did not allow her to continue living peacefully like this, but completely disrupted her uneventful life in a way she could not have expected.
In the year she officially entered high school, the head of the family, Karasuma Renya, moved back to Japan with her.
Karasuma Renya gave her two explanations.
Firstly, the shift in the focus of the Karasuma family's industry necessitated his permanent settlement in Japan.
The second was that the traditional big families in Tokyo jointly opened a special university open only to the children of these families, and the Karasuma family was among them.
Karasuma Renya intended to let Vermouth attend this university as well. Therefore, in order to let her adapt to the Japanese teaching method as soon as possible, he took her back to Japan and enrolled her in a Japanese high school so that she could adapt to the Japanese teaching method in advance.
Of course, Vermouth later found out that these were all lies.
Or rather, they are just superficial reasons.
The real reason why Karasuma Renya returned to Japan was actually just one...
But from Vermouth's perspective at the time, although the decision was very sudden, she did not feel much sadness.
Because she herself is actually looking forward to returning to Japan again.