Copyright Notice:This story is an original work by Muntasib_Ihshan789. All rights reserved. Do not copy or redistribute without permission.
The second house was not similar to the first one. Shuhi could feel a cold and tense atmosphere. It's the same feeling as entering a house which a murder took place.
Shuhi stepped in slowly, the wooden floor creaking under her shoes. She looked around the hallway to see if anything felt off. She could feel the same eeriness from the first house.
Utaro followed behind her, already pulling on his gloves.
"Let's start with the bedroom. Also, I got info that the victim wrote "rnd" with his own blood before dying." Utaro said.
"Now what could this mean?" Shuhi muttered.
They moved in silence at first. Shuhi looked over the small bed. The bedsheet was totally messy. Some of the side table drawers were half open. The police checked everything before.
So quiet, so not normal. Marking of the dead body was made on the floor using chalk by the police.
Suddenly, Utaro called Shuhi.
"Shuhi, over here."
She turned and walked to him. He showed Shuhi a broken hand mirror which he found after removing some furniture in the bedroom. The mirror was cracked, some pieces of broken glass could be seen with it. The mirror was scratched using a knife. As if someone had tried to destroy his own reflection.
Numbers and something strange was written among the cracks.
"Do you recognize this language?" Utaro asked.
Shuhi took a closer look at the writing.
"No. But it looks like a code." Shuhi replied.
Upon searching the house, she spotted a dustbin. Entering a hand, something black and crumpled came out from it. It was a table calendar which was burned at the edges, the month barely visible. But some dates were still clear. Numbers marked in what looked like dried blood.
The killer knew police methods. He made sure the calendar looked worthless unless someone like Shuhi, who thinks like him, would bother to analyze trash, spot blood, and decode numbers.
"More numbers… This time we got...."she whispered.
Utaro came over to look. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
She nodded. "They're surely connected."
"Then let's try to crack the number code." Shuhi said.
"Okay. This time we got 7, 5, 9, 7, 2, 8, 3, 7, 9, 8, 10, 3, 11. Some numbers seem to be repeating."Utaro said.
They worked quietly, writing down the mirror numbers and the blood-marked dates. Shuhi stared at the two lists, trying to make sense of them. They both spent quite a time thinking.
At the end, none of them could think of any connections in the number. The killer must have done these with deep thought.
While checking the house, Utaro pulled open the fridge, checking inside. Then reached for something stuck to the other side of the fridge.
It was a colorful child's painting. It showed a family of three. The father at the right, wearing suits usually lawyers wear. His face looked angry, and he held a stick in his hand. The mother and the son were on the left side with a sad face. The boy seemed to have tears in his eyes.
On the back a riddle was written.....
"When the sun sets on the fifth bell,The third eye shall close."
They stared at it.
Shuhi felt a chill go down her spine.
"The third eye… what does that mean?" Utaro asked, frowning.
She looked away, her voice quiet. "The third victim."
"So the 3rd murder was also hinted here!" Utaro told.
"And what is the meaning of the drawing? A man beating a woman and child?" Shuhi asked.
"The victim was a lawyer. He had a wife and child who live in their village now." Utaro said.
"Hmm... maybe the man was cruel with his wife and child? Maybe...?" Utaro said.
The sun was already dipping below the buildings outside, painting the sky in orange and red. Shuhi asked Utaro the time and to her surprise the time already crossed 5 pm.
"I need to go," she said suddenly. "If I'm late, I'm gonna have a hard time with my parents!."
"Oh sure. Get some rest. We'll go over everything again tomorrow." Utaro replied with a smile.
Her stomach growled. It's been a long since she has eaten something.
Back at home, Shuhi washed her face, sit down to have a heavy dinner. The brain needs calorie to process information. So sharp minds like her really need to eat a lot. Or else, absence of enough calories can lead to exhaustion and in worst case a temporary pass out.
Her parents bad-mouthed her for coming home late, usually the same thing they say when she comes late. But she barely heard them. Her mind was still stuck in that house, on the mirror, the calendar, and that creepy painting.
"When the sun sets on the fifth bell, the third eye shall close…" Thoughts of it kept spinning in her head.
She jumped on the bed laying down. Her room was dark except for the soft moonlight coming from the opened window. The numbers danced in her mind.
"There has to be a pattern. The mirror numbers were foreign but familiar… wait… what if they were based on a reversed number system?" Shuhi thought.
She sat up, grabbed her notebook, and started noting down.
Her thoughts ran like a storm.
"The killer wants us to follow. First house led us to the second. Second house to third. And the next will surely lead us to the fourth. It's like a path. A trail. He's pulling us along...."
She didn't sleep much that night.
The next morning, she met Utaro again near the second house. He was already sipping coffee in a healthy mood.
"Hey there! Looks like you haven't slept enough" he said.
Ignoring Utaro's words, Shuhi handed him her notebook.
"I figured out the code. The symbols on the mirror weren't normal digits. They were reversed characters from an old numeric script. When I flipped them and translated them into German numbers, then applied a basic multiplier cipher, the result consistently came out as '2'. Now look at the note. When you substract 2 from every single numbers from the calendar's, we get 5, 3, 7, 5, 0, 6, 1, 5, 7, 6, 8, 1 and 9." Shuhi said.
"But it still doesn't make sense. 5, 3, 7... what is it?" Utaro asked.
"No it does!" Shuhi replied.
"Remember "rnd" earlier? It's the short form of random used in coding stuff. Here r is the 18th letter, n is 14th and finally d is 4th. If we write these numbers side by side we get 181404. Now to make coordinates, Let's take 537506 from the numbers I got earlier." Shuhi said explaining.
"Hmm... okay." Utaro nodded.
"Subtract 181404 from it. We get 356102. Now let's take the other numbers which make 1576819. Substract 181404 from it and we get 1395415. After adding point in the middle of the numbers and after adding North and East.... we get the coordinates 35.6102° N, 139.5415° E."
"So the third spot is real! What a genius level code! No doubt the police can't crack it." Utaro said with a surprised tone." Utaro said with a surprised tone.
"The killer wants us to follow. First house led us to the second. Second house to third. And the next will surely lead us to the fourth." Shuhi thought.
"Then if the 1st house's clues lead us to 2nd house, 2nd to 3rd then why not skip ahead and go straight to the fourth spot? Searching the 3rd house would be time waste."
Shuhi replied with a no by nodding.
"Because that's exactly what the killer wants. He's testing us. If we skip steps, we might miss something important. This isn't just about stopping the next murder, it's about understanding his game."
Utaro was silent for a moment, then gave a slow nod. "Alright. Let's head to the 3rd house."
Shuhi looked ahead and prepared herself mentally to enter in another murder house.
"The killer is always one step ahead. But I'll catch up. I swear I will."
Shuhi muttered.
Dead Logic © 2025 by Muntasib_Ihshan789 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International