Chapter 3

Ushijima Kensuke was the kind of student who fit easily into the spaces around him.

He was not the top of the class, but he was never far from it. His grades were consistent, comfortably above average, the sort that suggested quiet diligence rather than brilliance. Teachers trusted him to submit work on time, to follow instructions without needing reminders, to contribute when called upon without trying to dominate the room. He understood what was expected of him and met those expectations with a steadiness that rarely drew attention.

Among his classmates, Kensuke was known less for his academic ability and more for the way he moved through conversations. He had a habit of making jokes at just the right moment, softening tension before it could settle, redirecting attention when it lingered too long on something uncomfortable. He was not the loudest voice, nor the most charismatic, but he was present in a way that made people feel at ease. In a group, he was the one who filled silences without forcing them, who listened as easily as he spoke.

It was this balance that made him easy to overlook at a distance and difficult to ignore up close.

In Class 3-B’s haunted house, Kensuke had not been assigned a particularly visible role at first. He had helped with construction, carrying materials, adjusting lighting, offering small suggestions that were usually accepted without debate. It was only later, when the idea of the final room took shape, that he volunteered to take on the part of the hanging corpse.

He had laughed about it when he first tried the position, remarking on how uncomfortable it was to remain still for extended periods. Others had taken turns testing it as well, but Kensuke seemed to adapt quickly. He found a way to distribute his weight, to control his breathing, to remain convincingly motionless even as people passed close by. It became, over time, his role.

On the day of the festival, the rotation of actors had been loosely managed. Students swapped in and out depending on fatigue, availability, or simple preference. The final room, however, required a certain level of consistency. The harness system, though carefully assembled, was not something that could be adjusted quickly, and so those assigned to it tended to remain longer than others.

Kensuke had taken his position early in the afternoon.

From the outside, nothing about the setup appeared unusual.

The rope hung from a reinforced ceiling beam above the final room of the haunted house attraction, illuminated carefully by dim red lighting designed to obscure detail while preserving the illusion of a hanging corpse. Visitors moved through quickly. Fear depended less on scrutiny than suggestion.

Kensuke’s role had been mechanically simple.

Beneath the costume, he wore a climbing-style support harness fitted around his waist and upper thighs. A concealed secondary line ran upward behind the backdrop and attached to the ceiling beam above. Under normal conditions, that hidden system would have carried most of his body weight, allowing the visible noose around his neck to remain largely theatrical.

The noose itself was never intended to function as the primary support.

At least not originally.

When assembled properly, the hidden harness distributed force downward through the pelvis and legs, reducing pressure on the neck to a minimal level. From a distance, lighting and posture concealed the difference effectively enough that visitors would perceive full suspension even if the actual load remained elsewhere.

Investigators later reconstructed the intended mechanics using Kensuke’s approximate body weight and the condition of the equipment recovered at the scene. Their findings suggested the hidden support line should have absorbed most of the downward force during operation. In that configuration, the visible rope would have remained under relatively light tension.

Instead, the physical evidence suggested something less straightforward.

The rope around Kensuke’s neck displayed signs of sustained load-bearing tension. Fibres within the cord had compressed under significant weight for an extended period of time. Meanwhile, the concealed harness system appeared to have carried substantially less force than expected by the design.

Whether that discrepancy resulted from mechanical failure, later adjustment, or deliberate modification remained difficult to determine conclusively.

What investigators could say with confidence was that the final configuration differed from the intended one.

At some stage, the distribution of weight shifted.

Rather than remaining primarily supported through the concealed harness, Kensuke’s body had ultimately settled into a position where the visible rope bore far greater tension than originally planned.

Timing further obscured the picture.

Throughout the festival, students rotating shifts assumed Kensuke remained in character voluntarily. The lighting concealed finer physical details, and because visitors expected stillness from the “corpse,” the lack of movement drew little immediate concern. By the time cleanup began, too much time had already passed for witnesses to reliably identify when the configuration may have changed or whether anyone had approached the mechanism at all.

That uncertainty became the centre of the investigation.

The system had originally been designed to create the appearance of danger while minimising actual risk. Yet somewhere between setup and discovery, that balance failed.

Detectives could not entirely rule out external interference. At the same time, forensic investigators acknowledged that the available evidence stopped short of conclusively establishing homicide. The altered load distribution suggested intentional handling was possible, but not definitively by whom or at what stage.

In the end, the mechanism revealed less certainty than discomfort.

The illusion had worked because everyone trusted the structure behind it.

Afterward, nobody could fully explain when that trust stopped holding.

Investigators collected voluntary fingerprints from every individual known to have entered the attraction area during setup and operation. Students, teachers, maintenance staff, festival organisers—anyone who might reasonably have handled the equipment was documented and compared against latent prints recovered from the support structure.

Most of the prints proved unsurprising. Partial overlaps, smudged contact traces, and indistinct transfers covered sections of the beam and backstage supports, consistent with multiple students assembling and adjusting props throughout the day.

But among them, investigators identified an additional partial print set recovered from a manually handled section near the concealed support line.

The prints did not match Kensuke.

They did not match any student, teacher, or staff member present during the festival.

More unsettlingly, no corresponding match appeared within accessible criminal databases either.

The quality of the recovered prints remained too incomplete for definitive identification, but their presence introduced a possibility investigators found difficult to dismiss entirely: that at some point, someone unaccounted for may have physically interacted with the mechanism.