Chapter 245. The Valentine’s Day School Dance: What’s Troubling Alicia. (5/5)

I had no idea.

What was she doing?

When I passed through the hallway, I discreetly peeked at the camera and discovered there was still paper blocking it. Rosa hadn’t cleaned up.

If she was outside, why had she fixed the chair but not removed the paper yet? Unless… she couldn’t remove it…

Why wouldn’t she be able to remove it though?

Was I wrong to assume she was outside?

If she wasn’t outside… then… did that mean she was inside and I somehow missed her? Impossible, her red hair and red eyes stuck out from a crowd like a sore thumb. The lights had been turned on by that point as well.

No, maybe she was outside after all.

What was I missing here?

I was too curious and dying to know the trick. What was it?

I racked my brain retracing all my steps from the second I got to school trying to find any sort of discrepancies.

At last, I found one. It was something completely inconsequential at first glance. When we got to the gymnasium there were two people sitting behind the table. Meaning… there were two chairs at that time. However, when I exited earlier, there was only one chair behind the table.

What happened to the other chair? Where did it go? Someone had moved it inside to sit down on it. Yes, that easily explained it. But I was an author who could weave together a possible story behind the mystery of the missing chair. Rosa moved it. If I drew that conclusion, what did it mean?

She wanted me to take that chair. She couldn’t communicate it to me, so she removed the other chair. Now that I thought about it, the bespectacled blond… was she not sitting in a chair?

It suddenly all clicked.

What could Rosa have done to ensure she wouldn’t be caught?

It felt like electric currents were racing through my brain as Rosa’s actions became obvious. She was the bespectacled blond.

How did she do it?

Did she have one with her? Hell no.

Did she have one in her locker? I doubted it. Even if she did, she’d have to go back to her locker and be caught on cameras without a disguise.

Where did she get it then?

The theatre club. 

Their club room? No.

She’d be spotted on the way there by cameras. She needed a disguise from elsewhere. There just happened to be somewhere in this gym that had what she needed. Where was it?

Where else would a theatre club use?

The stage. The stage behind the DJ with the curtains closed. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they kept some useful stuff back there. Rosa must have snuck up the stairs to the backstage area which wasn’t guarded by any teachers. That must have been where she also got the paper. It must have been left over from what they used to cut out the heart-shaped decorations that were hung up.

Genius. My girlfriend is a freaking genius assassin.

She probably took a mask to fully hide her face as well. At least, I would have. I wouldn’t put it on right away though. Rather, I’d hide it inside my blazer. I’d wear the wig on the way out. As for her red eyes, I figured she had a special set of tinted glasses that she used to make her eyes appear brown rather than red. After that, she entered the boys' change room by the exit on the stage side area where there weren’t any cameras.

The girls' change room was set up in a different area at the center of the long wall the second-year students occupied below the bleachers on the second floor. There was a side room there with a window that could be opened up to the gymnasium side to set up a small shop to sell food and drinks.

Inside the boy’s change room, she put on the mask to obstruct her facial features while the wig hid her hair. The glasses she had on under the mask altered her eye color. It was an impromptu disguise but it worked perfectly.

After that, she was able to slip out into the branch hallway through the exit by the boys' change room in full disguise without ever drawing anyone’s suspicions.

From there, she blocked off any cameras she passed by with the paper left over from the decorations. How did she stick the paper to the cameras? Using the double-sided duct tape that was also left over from what was used to make some do the decoration. Why not just use duct tape alone on the camera? It was simple.

The way she made use of the duct tape would likely solve that mystery. She could attach a long flat piece of double-sided duct to the paper then make it so the duct tape only contacts the rim of the camera. It could be easily removed this way as well later on. If she just plastered the duct tape on directly, it would be harder to remove. It would make for a much faster clean-up process. She had to jump to reach the cameras after all. It was overall much easier to both apply and remove it in this manner.

The more I thought over what she did I realized how many layers there were to such minute decisions in such a short period of time.

Once she got back to the gymnasium entrance, that was the location of her final trick. The chair she tampered with. A string. It had to be a string attached to the front leg raised up off the ground. The door on her side was closed. There must have been a long loose string passed under the door. That was why she was strategically positioned there. So she could hide the evidence of the chair being used to block off the door.

While everyone would be distracted trying to open the door, she’d yank on the string under the door to pull the chair to the corner. When the door opened up, it would end up hidden behind the door.

It was a flawless magic trick. An illusion veiled in multiple layers of deception. The reason why she wouldn’t want to remove the paper from in front of the cameras was to keep the trick hidden.

While everyone was focused on exiting the gymnasium, she’d return everything she borrowed from backstage which was hidden beneath her blazer. It was truly the perfect crime.

Except for the loss of my zip-up hoodie, I guess. Haaaaah. Clothes weren’t cheap. There was no way I’d be getting that back though. That was in the hands of the student council vice president now. Wait, was it? Now that I think about it, when I passed by her I didn’t see it.

Oh! Did Rosa retrieve that too? The vice president probably got up soon after to try and open the door and forgot about it. Rosa who was right beside her could have yoinked it from under their noses and hid it inside her blazer as well while everyone was distracted with the door.

Well, all of this was still nothing more than mere speculation though. If she returned the hoodie to me, it’d effectively prove the conspiracy theory of Rosa being disguised as the bespectacled blond.

While I’d made all these deductions in my head, I’d retrieved my bag from my locker and stored away my new shoes. It had actually taken me quite a bit of time to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

By the time I finished up my internal post-analysis of the events which transpired at the school dance, I’d arrived at work. There were still ten minutes until our shift started. Rosa wasn’t here yet.

I got changed into my work clothes and waited at the back for a bit. Five minutes later the backroom door opened up. It was Rosa.

“Took you long enough.”

“Hmph! There was a lot I had to do today.”

“Oh? You had a lot of work to do? But it was just a school dance, right? Did you get dragged into helping with the clean-up or something?

“Yeah. Yeah. There was so much cleaning up.”

“By the way… do you have my hoodie?”

Rosa’s body twitched.

“Your reaction tells me I’m correct. You were the blond bespectacled girl sitting down beside the exit when I passed by.”

“No way~ how’d you figure it out? I thought everything I did was flawless this time.”

“The pencil in the exit wasn’t exactly where I left it and I looked at the camera by chance and noticed there was paper in front of it. That led me down a long rabbit hole of discoveries. I’m honestly astonished.”

“How much did you figure out?”

“Haha. Everything.”

“No way. Everything? I don’t believe it.”

I opened my mouth and explained every single step from beginning to end that I’d deduced including the questions I found myself asking along the way to arrive there.

My explanation took up our entire shift because I had to stop whenever we had to deal with customers.

By the time I finished my explanation, Rosa was pouting.

On our way home from work, Rosa complained, “This is ridiculous. Just when I thought I came out on top you go and solve everything without me even getting a chance to brag or boast about any of it.”

“So? Was there anything I missed?”

“Grrrrr…. No. Nothing. Somehow, you got it all. Next time though… I’ll make sure you’ll never figure it out.”

“Well, there is one thing I’m curious about though.”

“What?”

“How’d you clean up the papers after that? You originally had a mask on when you went around putting them up, but you snuck off and returned everything you borrowed while everyone was exiting, right? Did you just leave them to fall off on their own or leave them for security to remove them?”

“Oh! You did actually miss something then.”

“What?”

“There was an ulterior motive to retrieving your hoodie. It’s a reversible hoodie that’s brown on the inside. I ran around school with the brown to the outside after I returned everything. The hood hid my hair and just looking in the opposite direction as the cameras while removing the paper was enough to hide my facial features. When the coast was clear and no one was looking I removed them. That was why I wanted them to be easy to remove.”

“Oh! That’s not a bad idea. I never wear the brown side. I completely forgot that this hoodie was a reversible one.” I facepalmed when I realized I’d overlooked something so simple.

“This way you can still keep using it in the future. Nobody got a good look at your face in it and you weren’t caught on camera. It’s not a very unique hoodie either, so even if someone from school sees you in it, they won’t jump to conclusions and assume it was you. The most unique thing about it is how it’s reversible, but you never wear the brown side anyway. Nobody would have noticed it was brown on the inside either as it was still dark in the gymnasium when I retrieved it.”

“I see. You really are the best girlfriend a guy could have.”

“Yeah, yeah~ heheh, I’m the best, so praise me more~”

When Rosa finally got a minor little victory, her mood improved significantly.

When we arrived home, to my relief, the Valentine’s saga had finally come to a close... at least… for the time being.