"You'd better. Dolls are people too. You should learn some respect." Annabella stroked her doll's hair.

"Look, the whole murder message thing left some of us on edge. I mean, I don't think anybody would have been investigating anyone under normal circumstances," Marshall says, folding his arms. "Hopefully we can respect that in the future."

"I gotta be honest here though, inspecting the dolls, really? What was that supposed to prove?" he says, raising an eyebrow at Eli.

"Also, I think we need to start hearing some alibis. Seems like a lot of people spent a lot of time traveling around at one point or another."

"You fell?" Nana gasped at Rose after hearing Taylor's testimony. "Are you alright? You should be more careful than that, okay? Thanks for catching her, Mr. Honda!" she added, nodding appreciatively to the Minstrel.

She folded her arms and sighed sadly. "Mr. Anderson was kind of strict, but, like, he was a good guy. I guess it'd be pretty awful if we didn't try to find out what happened to him, huh... Uh, you all just need to know what I was doing in the gym and stuff, right? Like, I can tell you about stuff I did in the morning like waking up and getting washed up and getting dressed and all that if you really want to hear it, but I don't think it's really all that important. Or interesting. So I'll just skip it for now, if that's okay.

"Um, Mr. Taylor pretty much said what I did in the gym, I think. I was helping with decorating for a while, Miss Althea came in with some food and fell, so Miss Nina and I helped bring her to the medical room to lie down. I thought Miss Althea might have been sick, but she said she was just tired. Then she realized her mask broke off when she fell, so Miss Nina went to get her another one from her room. Uh, Miss Althea's room, I mean. I don't think Miss Nina has any masks in her room.

"So, uh, Miss Althea and I just sort of talked about random stuff for a while until about... 2:10 I think it was? Something like that. Anyway, Miss Evelyn came in with a mask for Miss Althea. She said Miss Nina had something to write and told her about the mask. Oh, yeah, her monocle was gone, too. Miss Althea asked about it and Miss Evelyn said something happened between her and Mr. Nicos and it broke. So, like, besides that, they both seemed like they were okay, so I asked if I could go check on Sis and they said yeah and so that's what I did.

"Sis was in the kitchen cooking stuff, of course. I told her what was going on and said I was gonna help her out! So she told me to put a hair net on and we were cooking for a bit, then Mr. Marshall came in to check on us I guess, but then he got mad and said we were letting someone poison the food or something? I got a little scared and kind of knocked a couple things over and that, like, ended up knocking a piece of food into Mr. Marshall's mouth which seemed to calm him down again. He said he was sorry and was leaving before he messed things up more than he already had. Um, then Sis and I just kind of finished cooking and brought it to the gym and, uh, you were all there, right? I guess you know what happened after that..."

Nana took a breath after her long monologue and glanced at Rose again. "I think Miss Rose mentioned the only stuff we found when we searched the garden. We checked the classrooms, too, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with those. There were some missing chairs and tables, but those were taken to the gym. So I guess they weren't really missing after all, huh? What would you call them, then? Taken? Misplaced? Those don't sound right, either... Uh, anyway, I think that's it."

---

"Oh yeah, that's right, I did that," Marshall blushes, rubbing the back of his head. "Anyway, yeah, I was in the kitchen at about two fifteen or so, and I tested some of the hors d'oeuvres. No poison, just deliciousness. But yeah, That tomato fell on the floor when I was in there, same with the cutlery thing that I knocked over on accident."

Nina votes for Marshall before proceeding with her alibi.

"Teacher couldn't even protect himself, yet alone his students. Typical teacher really.

I was in the kitchen with Hoshiko and Althea. We brought our food to the gym, and Althea fell over. I carried her, with Nana only helping a bit, to the medical room. Then Althea started cryin' that her mask got broken or somethin', so I had to go get her a new one. I took my sweet time because the sooner I came back, the more work I'd have to do. I saw Evelyn on the way and made her get the mask. I went to the recreation room to pre-write my speech."

She takes out the crumpled piece of paper.

"It ain't perfect, but it's better than if I didn't. It was still boring though, so I felt like taking a nap. When I woke up, I the funeral was about to start, to I half-assed the rest of it, and went to the gym."

"...In the end, Nick was a good guy, wasn't he..? So we all owe it to him to solve this case..."

Nicos rubbed Akrasia sheepily, his eyes wandering at the others. "Y'know, I thought we were all getting along...we didn't need to resort to playing Eve's game...so right now, all I can think is that the culprit in this case had a heart full of evil..!"

He pounded his fists together and began to recall his testimony.

"Alrighty then, let's get to it! You all know how this started with us...Rose came and asked for a buncha bodyguards, cause someone pretty terribly threatened her, right? All the warnings and stuff...and they desecrated Vic's body too. And then, er..."

Nicos blushed, rubbing his head.

"Well, I was so caught up in protecting Rose, y'know..? I really didn't want anyone else to die...and when I get like this, I get really crazy sometimes! So when I went to the garden, I saw Evelyn and Skylar picking some flowers... I was sort of caught up in Evelyn's scalpel and threatened her...Skylar was there to stop me..."

He held two hands to his head, clearly embarrassed. "Aww...I was being so silly..! Sorry, Evelyn...I thought I was doing something good for Rose...a-and I'm glad Rose is safe, after everything, y'know?"

Crossing his arms, he began rocking back and forth. "Thinking back, I thought Marshall should have been with them too, but he wasn't..."

"I was told that he ditched them to go on patrol, rather than dig the graves and pluck flowers," Taylor clarified, crossing his arms. "We'll see if that ends up being the truth."

"And, uh... just don't kill anyone on accident because you got crazy or whatever, Nicos," he added after a slight pause.

After a strange silence from Evelyn, she finally spoke up again. "Ah...I feel as tough I am ready to speak now. Let the trial begin." Evelyn looked up...and immediately, something was noticeable. Something other than the mask she wore around her face just as she did last trial, that being her eyes. They were both clearly visible, and her monocle was nowhere to be seen for whatever reason. However, she said nothing on this matter.

"So I shall start with today's events. At 12:55 PM today, I headed out to the garden along with Marshall and Skylar to prepare the graves. And, as Taylor has already pointed out, Marshall came up with some excuse to leave us to do the work instead, and went out seemingly on patrol. So it was simply the both of us to do all the work, tragically." Her tone seemed rather dry. "But we both switched out our gloves for a gardening pair and started working. Immediately, though, I noticed that Skylar was being rather brash, yanking out flowers with roots and all. It simply wasn't proper, so we agreed to switch places, and thus I started cutting off the flowers delicately from their stems. It was lovely in a way, operating on plants for a change. Far more simpler beings! ...But ahem, yes, anyway... At 1 PM, that absolute dunce Nicos showed up."

She appeared quite irritated suddenly. "He somehow mistook my scalpel- an instrument of surgery which I had been carrying with me from the beginning of the trip- for a weapon, of all the blasted things! And you know what he did next? He took his sword, knocked the hand with which I held my scalpel and then pierced my monocle!" Her tone of frustration amplified as she continued. "You know how expensive it is to get something like that?! Without it, I can't even see a single one of you properly! It's all in pieces now, and it's a miracle that my eve wasn't blinded by that imbecilic clod! He was about to skewer me with the damned thing too! I was just fortunate that Skylar managed to come to my rescue, knocking him out cold with her shovel. Then he woke up on his own and profusely apologised for his actions, as if it would compensate for my lack of proper... you know." She took a deep breath, calming down again now that she had gotten this frustration off her chest.

"We went back and forth after that to set up the graves and delivering the flowers. I recall the gym being rather well set-up, with Annabella's dolls seated in the chairs there. At about the same time, Mr. Anderson, poor man, came over to check up on us. We explained to him what Marshall and Nicos had done, and he told us he would have a word with them. After a while, at 1:50, Nina showed up. It was easy to tell from her grey suit and hairnet. She explained to me what had happened to Althie and that she needed to write her speech in the meantime. Of course, I understood perfectly and was glad to do her work for her. I finished picking out the flowers and left them in a nice pile for Skylar, then put the gloves back in the shed before I went to get a mask for Althie from her room. then I proceeded to the medical room, and..."

She paused, a little uncertain. "I...saw someone. Someone who was...sneaking about into the staff bedroom hall. I don't know who it was. I couldn't recognise their clothing, and without my monocle I wasn't able to see their face, but... I believed at the time it was Kyoya, since he would be the type to be sneaking about as such. I don't believe I saw anyone else, other than Nina doing a great job writing her speech asleep. Then I made it to Althie and gave her the mask I brought her. We chatted together for a bit till 2:15, when Mr. Anderson came in. He gave Althie his own medical diagnosis and told us to rest before leaving. Then we...simply stayed together till it was time for the funeral."

"Now, we come to the investigation. We were in charge of the morgue, and I autopsied Mr. Anderson's corpse. Marshall summarised some of the important parts, but I shall elaborate a bit more." Evelyn clapped her gloved hands together."There was a rose slotted through the handle of the door, obviously. The door itself could be closed, but not locked. It was dark inside, with some light within so you could make out some details as a safety feature in case one was buried alive. One could hold out in there for about thirty minutes at most, I would wager. Meanwhile, Nicos and Marshall continued investigating the morgue. Marshall has already gone through all of that, so now I shall get to the important part."

"By then, I'd finished the autopsy. As Marshall said, the COD was simple asphyxiation. Now it seems as though this implies he suffocated, but it's not necessarily true. The bottle in Nick's hand is a potent medicine but could have worked as a poison in excess or misused. I’m not quite sure of the effects, but it’s not uncommon for chemicals like this to cause lung failure in some form", Evelyn clarified. "Though even that, it's not necessary that he had to have been poisoned. The bottle is half-full, but might have only been half-full to begin with. I can’t tell if he drank any or not. It’s quite possible he simply ran out of oxygen in the cold chamber, they are airtight for preservation. But as I said before, he should have been able to just open the door and avoid such a fate. He might have been dead already when he was put inside."

"Afterwards, we went through some other miscellaneous rooms and found a few things. First was the chair, as Althie mentioned and went into detail. But most interestingly, we found one of Kyoya's RC cars near the staff bedrooms...or at least its broken remains. Nearby was its camera, crushed into the carpet. It was quite shocking, though the man himself seems alright now... Anyway, I believe that summarises my investigation." Evelyn paused to take a deep breath because holy cow that was a lot of stuff. "I hope that has helped to some effect, at least."

---

Hoshiko nodded. "I can confirm the state of Vic's body as well. Rose didn't even want to go near it-- not that I blame her. It looked like it had been messed up, somehow-- like Rose said, Eli hypothesized a drop from some distance enough to... well, to make it like that."

"Also we checked the classrooms too, but there was nothing... stryaaaaaaaa..." Hoshiko put one hand to cover her mouth and stretched the other. "Sorry. I mean to say, that a couple of tables and most of the chairs weren't there, but that makes sense because they were in the gym..."

"...I suppose thinking about it, the figure I saw at the gym did have brown hair..." Evelyn murmured, recollecting it. "Though I saw them only at a glance, so I recall little else about them."

"Another deduction I'd like to make is about the time of death. I've said that Mr. Anderson visited me and Althie at 2:15, but thinking about it, he only actually left the room at 2:25. So I think this is a strong lower bound on his death. As for the upper bound...well, it had to be before 2:50, since we were all gathered in the gym by then. So that's about 25 minutes the killer had to commit this most heinous crime", she said grimly. "Perhaps we need to go through each other's alibis more concretely. At this point, I feel as though we are still lacking a great number of details here."

---

"Well, I suppose most of my alibi has been covered. I was at the kitchen with Ms. Nina and Ms. Hoshiko until about 13:40. After arriving at the gym, I must have tripped on something... I hit my head really hard, so I had to be taken to the medical room. I even thought I saw a puppy for a minute, but it turned out to just be Ms. Nana helping me." she seemed much more disappointed Nana wasn't a puppy than a normal person should be. I'd be offended.
"After that, I was in the medical room first with Ms. Nana, then with Evy. The only relevant part, I believe, is Mr. Anderson dropping by at about... 14:15. As Evy said, he stayed for ten minutes. I remember because he was checking his watch."

"I don't quite remember," Eli said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking aside. "Obviously I was pretty nervous after everything that happened. I suppose I was worried that our would-be murderer might have planted something on the dolls, since they tend to go everywhere without suffering intense scrutiny."

Afterwards, Eli started looking through his holographic screen, seemingly waiting to make note of all the alibis before commenting further.

---

"Um, so... Mr. Vic's body looked like it fell, right?" Nana wondered uncertainly. "So, like, if that were the case, someone would have had to push it from the balcony, right? It'd have to be after Miss Skylar left the garden though, I think. It'd be pretty hard to miss hearing something like that..."

---

"He must have died after leaving the medical room, correct?" Annabella said. "That was when he was last seen alive."

"That does seem to be the case", Evelyn agreed. "The mess in the kitchen suggests that he could have been attacked there as well, though Marshall claims to have seen it still."



"It does seem to be the case, yes! I visited the balcony myself when delivering the mask and saw Nina fast asleep there at the time, though no corpse there, so it had to have been after that", she reasoned. "Though I don't know who had the opportunity for that, or even why they would do such a thing."

---

"Obviously," Nina mutters in response to Annabella "Not exactly possible to die before then. That narrows it down to 50 minutes... big time frame. Unless someone poisoned him beforehand or something."

"25" minutes, Evelyn quickly corrected. "He left at 2:25 according to the clock, and he wasn't at the gym by 2:50, meaning he had to have been disposed of by then. About half the time you said, which should narrow things down much further."

---

Nina tuts.

"So only now you mention. 25 minutes it is then."

"If Nick suffocated," Eli says, "Then he would have died after we'd all gathered to wait on him. He could've passed away whenever if it was the medicine that killed him...but if it was, I'm not sure how it could have been administered to him. It's also strange that the stuff was found in his hand. It looks as if it's been set up to look like a suicide."

---

"Yes, that's certainly strange", Evelyn agreed thoughtfully. "It's strange that they would make it look like that despite it being unlikely. I wonder what their goal was..."

"I notice that there are a lot of uncertainties surrounding Kyoya as well", Evelyn added. "There's the fact that his room was empty at the time when Annabella went over to check it, and there's also a fairly good chance I saw him creeping through the staff corridor at the time. This plus the mysteriously damaged RC car in the corridor when we investigated makes me wonder what had happened to him... Not that I suspect him, of course. I doubt he would want to kill our teacher like this."

---

"Let's not jump to conclusions. I'm sure Mr. Okamura can explain himself, correct? Mr. Okamura?" Althea said, calmly. Very calmly.

"I-I said sorry! I can, uh, try and fix it for you! I'm great with my hands!"

"The ones you almost skewered me with? Yes, truly incredible hand coordination there", Evelyn replied in an unusually scathing manner. "And no thank you. Only I'm able to truly fix this... Though I won't be able to till the trial ends, I'm afraid. All the more reason we must find the killer posthaste."

---

"Lady Evelyn, did you notice any bumps or bruises on Nick's body?" Honda asked, addressing the coroner. "If we're unsure if the medicine was used, maybe someone hit him to knock him unconscious, then put him in the storage chamber to suffocate. That'd explain why he couldn't escape either."

"I was wonderin' the same thing..." Eli said, "But when we found him, he had something of a pained expression on his face, right? So I'm not sure he coulda been sleeping...but I'm not sure that really lines up with our other possibilities either."

---

"Hey, yeah, maybe! That thing you just said, I mean!" Nana chimed in helpfully. "That could be why the, um, the body was moved..." she continued, a bit more timidly. "Like, there probably isn't room for two people in there, right?"

---

"Well, he could have woken up while he was suffocating." Annabella said. "Seems like an awful way to die, trapped and dying with no way of escape."

"I...don't believe I noticed any outer injuries", Evelyn stated simply. "Though it was indeed possible to escape where he was from. As I explained, the door cannot be locked as a safety mechanism in case one is buried alive. so if we was put there alive, he could have definitely left. ...Unless he didn't want to for whatever reason."

---

"Maybe that gas stuff knocked him out while he was poisoned?" Nana suggested.

---

Skylar sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I guess I should give my alibi, or whatever, before this gets too stupid. Though, Evelyn got most of it already."

"At 12:55 PM, Evelyn, Marshall, and I were in the garden to pick flowers and prep the graves, but that idiot quarterback left us to to do the work ourselves. That was already mentioned, but I'm still annoyed by it," she added curtly. "Anyway, blah, blah, blah, I sucked at pulling up flowers so Evelyn and I switched jobs and I dug the graves instead."

She glanced over at Nicos with a sour expression. "And then that idiot showed up around 1 PM and began shouting at Evelyn. Numbnuts thought her scalpel was a weapon, I hit him with a shovel, you know the story."

"At 1:10 PM, Nick passed by us, though nothing important really happened, if I'm to be honest. By 1:50 PM, the graves were finished and I went to bring flowers to the gym. When I came back from that trip, Evelyn was gone and I was alone. However, she was kind enough to leave the flowers she picked in a neat little pile for me. I then took those and returned to the gym."

The blunette yawned, continuing her riveting story. "At 2:15 PM, while in the gym to drop off the last of the flowers, I informed the goons in there that I'd be going to my room to fix my skates, since they were acting super stupid. But, before I left, Eli engaged in doll molestation, or something, and Annabella yelled at him. On my way back to my room, I passed through the garden to swap the gardening gloves I was wearing for my normal ones."

"At 2:30 PM, I was on the second floor. I went through the corridor with the staff bedrooms, since it's just faster to get to my room that way. I saw a battered and beaten RC car, that I can only assume was Kyoya's, with a detached camera a bit of a distance away from it. I went to my room, fixed my skates, then went to go to the funeral, and that's definitely all that happened," she said, sheepishly.

"My investigation team consisted of Annabella, Kyoya, Honda, Nina, and myself," she paused, "and we didn't find shit worth talking about. Except... well, except for Nina's shitty eulogy, I guess. Go nuts."

"Ah...the decontamination process, of course. I do suppose that could be a possibility", Evelyn acknowledged before turning to Skylar. "So you also happened to notice the broken RC car? Thirty minutes before we all gathered at the gym, too...How curious. I wonder what on earth Kyoya got himself into."

---

Marshall looks at Skylar with a subtle smirk, "Sorry, I was really excited to spend hours digging graves and all, but I figured I'd tear myself away from it to let others have a chance."

"Anyway, I figure Nick could have died any time before we found him. After all, it would have taken him thirty minutes to asphyxiate in that chamber. It's not like the killer has any incentive to watch the door the whole time. We might have only been seconds late to saving him."

"Ah, regarding the decontamination process, I believe that it happens automatically, correct?" Althea asked. "And none of us have the authority to override it, so that means it could go off without the killer needing to be present at all."
That was enough. However, she tacked on one more token theory.
"Or, it could have been an accident, I suppose..."

Nicos nearly let out a cry, yet he held it inside and took his incoming roasts like a man.

"A-Anyways, I can buy that it was the gas that knocked Nic out. Yeah, I'm sure of it! But...I'm not so sure if it was a part of the procedure...cuz like, there's an alarm that blares out if the room goes off automatically, right? I guess no one was around to hear it, but then again, someone lathered the control panel with some gross sticky stuff."

"What if that weird morgue gas thing killed him? I know it's not fatal the first time it happens, but maybe after a few rounds it gets worse and worse..." Rose theorizes. "And maybe that vial he was holding was some kind of antidote that he didn't manage to use in time.."

"The gas is non-fatal, regardless of exposure," Adam chimed in. "And the medicine would not have been any use in saving him. I believe its primary function is in speeding up the healing process of bones, though this would be on a timescale of days rather than hours or minutes, so that aspect is unlikely to be relevant here. There are no injuries it could have cured."

"Okay, but even if we're not sure how he died, it's clear that the killer purposefully messed up that console, you know what I mean? Nick said only he could use the console, so somebody didn't want Nick doing the override."

Marshall turns to Nicos, "Look dude, I'm going to have to talk to you about messin' with Evelyn later, but that gas stuff like paralyzed you, right? Nick said the effects last for fifteen minutes."

"Oh, yeah, that was how it worked, huh..." Nana rocked her head back and forth a little. "Hey, that reminds me. There was a big box in front of the door, right? So, uh, if Mr. Anderson was the only one in there, how'd it get there? Did he put it there himself?"

---

"The killer probably put it up so no one would walk in on them," Taylor theorized. "But was there any other way out besides the door...?"

"S-Sorry, sorry, sorry..." Nicos repeated.

Nicos bowed his head as he answered the next part of Marshall's question. "E-Er, yeah, it was hard to do anything under that stuff...I-I mean, n-no! It was nothing! Nothing can, uh...hold me down?"