This particular episode is practically a complete, 100% side track as far as the purposes of my solution project are concerned. It gave the reader the idea that the ten rules of Knox apply to the mysteries and provided a lot of clues for the previous mysteries, including the big one, Yasu’s identity. However it did not actually discuss any of the mysteries by themselves, nor did it have many mysteries that I can discuss on their own. On top of all that it had an ONSLAUGHT of Red Truths that were usually barely more than word-games and irrelevant and/or redundant bickering to complicate things, PLUS the Blue Truths on top of all that. Finally, as if those things weren’t annoying enough, the actual mysteries in this episode are so vague that is becomes ridiculously hard to solve any of them with 100% certainty.
That said it is still probably my favorite episode in Chiru, if not in the whole series, because the ???? part is just GLORIOUS. This was the fourth time I read that particular part, and yet I still couldn’t help but giggle like a schoolgirl all the way through. :3
I mean, I still involuntarily squee every single time Ronove shows up and Dream End Discharger starts playing, which is the biggest Crowning Music of Awesome in a game with one of the best soundtracks of all time with about a dozen other CMoAs… :3
But back to the topic:
Natsuhi receives a call from an unknown “man”, claiming to be Natsuhi’s “son” from 19 years ago and tells her that he is coming on the day of the conference for revenge. Later he asks Natsuhi about her favorite season. She answers fall, and then he instructs her to uncover a playing card depicting the season. Then he proceeds to blackmail her with Krauss’ life, ordering her to hide in a wardrobe in a certain room the next day. Later Natsuhi notes that the only person who would know about her favorite season would be Shannon, and therefore she suggests that she might be an accomplice.
It was Yasu, of course. Even though Genji says the call came from an external line, it was actually from an internal line all along. The card and her knowing Natsuhi’s favorite season points at Shannon (possibly a clue for Battler), but it is quite likely that there were four cards hidden in the room, so no matter which season Natsuhi would have chosen, there would have been a corresponding card there.
As for the blackmail, it’s so that she could be framed for Hideyoshi’s murder, though this plan later gets complicated by other factors.
Battler, Rudolf, Kyrie, Eva, Hideyoshi, Shannon, Kanon, were in the dining hall when there was a knock on the door. When they check it out, there is a letter written by Beatrice with the family head’s ring that declares Battler the family head.
(Ugh… This episode -really- goes overboard with the number and length of the Reds… -.-)
There was no knocking at all. It was Kanon who picked up the letter, but in reality there was no letter on the floor either. Kanon only pretended to hear a knocking sound (thus there was no fake sound or misidentification), then acted out finding the letter in the hallway (thus the letter wasn’t placed by anyone anywhere), fulfilling all the Red Truths.
George, Maria, Jessica and Rosa were found dead in the cousins’ room on the second floor of the guest house. Their throats were cut open and there was a lot of blood at the scene. There was a magic circle on the door. Genji was found dead in his own room with his throat cut open the same way. Genji’s room was sealed and the seal was only disturbed when the body was discovered in the morning.
(Here I had to pick out a few redundant red truths because there were just so many of them. I mean, holy shit! Just including all the Red Truths would have been longer than the actual solution! If you are unsatisfied with the omissions, make your case why they would be important and I will reconsider. All of them can be found at link)
It was mentioned a number of times how the magic circle was apparently drawn pretty sloppily and how it was an “imitation”. Erika never saw the corpses, and they were hidden under blankets.
The cousins, Rosa and Genji only pretended to be killed as a part of a show put up for Erika. All of the adults, the servants and Battler was playing along. It became possible because Battler was not the detective of this episode, therefore his POV is just as questionable as everyone else’s. The magic circle was written up by one of the “accomplices” using Maria’s notes, explaining the inaccuracies.
Since there were no corpses to identify or deaths to confirm, #1, #2 and #24 are sidestepped. #4 is explained by the time of the declaration: if a Red Truth doesn’t have a time-frame attached to it, it means that it only applies to the events/facts of a particular game that happened before the Red was uttered.
Since the “trial” technically takes place on the 6th at midnight, it means that the victims could have died at any time between the discovery of the bodies and the time of the trial and the Red Truth would still be true.
They also “disprove” the possibility that the crime took place after 3:00, except that it’s another technicality: there was no crime to speak of, therefore it didn’t take place either before or after 3:00. The cousins and Genji died at another unspecified time (which also explains #26-30, as it is completely possible that if they were killed elsewhere, then their bodies would not be discovered and moved).
Hideyoshi was killed in a guest room with a stake in his back. Natsuhi was in the wardrobe during this time, but the wardrobe was closed so she didn’t see anything and didn’t move because of the blackmail. A few minutes later Eva calls for help because her husband didn’t answer and she couldn’t enter because the chain was set from the inside. Gohda cuts the chain with a wire-cutter.
This is pretty much the vaguest “murder” in the entire series, since there is no Red Truth dedicated to it at all and it wasn’t even discussed in the game.
This is my take on it: Hideyoshi enters the room and locks it with the chain. Then he plays out being attacked while Eva is outside. This was planned in advance, as it is shown by Gohda showing up with the wire cutter almost instantly.
Everyone rushes in to discover the “corpse”, but by the time Erika with her detective privilege arrives he is already wrapped in sheets and taken to the parlor, so she cannot confirm his death.
In short, it is another fake murder played up in case Erika is within earshot.
It is more than likely that it was the cousins who came up with the idea of creating a murder mystery game for Erika just to spite her intellectual rapist ass. The reason why the adults are playing along is a different matter however, namely that they are doing so to put Natsuhi in a corner. Their goal is to create a situation where they can force Natsuhi to admit that Kinzo was dead all along and use this evidence to force Krauss to actually accept Battler’s claim for the headship and streamline the process of dividing the gold. This would also explain why Eva put her seals everywhere beyond any human reason.
In fact it is quite likely that the reason Hideyoshi’s murder was staged was because of Kinzo’s “escape” from the study and, since they don’t know what happened to Krauss (it is almost certain that he was taken by Yasu at this point) they plan on putting the blame on Krauss to corner Natsuhi even further, but then Erika catches Natsuhi on the way back and this diverts the discussion.
Because of this it is almost sure that Yasu wasn’t working with them, since it is stated in red that Krauss was killed right after the morning phone call to Natsuhi, where his life was used to blackmail her.
This particular Episode takes the unreliability of the narration to never-before seen heights. The biggest point of confusion this caused was thanks to the scenes where Shannon and Kanon appeared to be present in the same room at the same time with Erika, the detective with the infallible objective viewpoint. How does that work? Let me quote Redsoxit from down below, as he put it quite eloquently:
[…] Even if the “Narrative” states that both Shannon and Kanon existed at the same time and in the same room as Erika, we are never explicitly shown Erika’s OWN perspective and point of view throughout the episode. Remember that the only thing established regarding the role of the Detective is that the Detective is not the culprit and that the Detective’s OWN point of view is completely and unmistakably objective. So unless, Erika HERSELF unequivocally states in red that she saw both Kanon and Shannon at the same time in the same room, we still have plenty of room to doubt the perspective of the “Narrative” (as written by Hachijo and read aloud by the witches) that allowed Kanon and Shannon to exist at the same time and room as Erika. For example, the “Narrative” shows us (the readers) corpses on the beds in the cousins’ room and attempts to convince us that the corpses are dead only because Erika never bothers to check that the corpses are fake. If we were shown Erika’s 1st person point-of-view, we would have seen something resembling the adults “crying” over their children’s deaths while completely covering Erika’s view of the bodies and we (as readers) would have been much more EASILY able to doubt the validity of the corpses.
In other words, not a single scene we are presented with can be considered objective, and as such even scenes featuring Erika should be treated the same way as the magic-laden meta-events of the rest of the series.