27

Chapter 27 It took her just a few seconds to realize that something was wrong as the events of the afternoon came rushing back to her. She glanced down to check if her hands were still locked around her bag, and as she did so, Kaede's gaze slowly traveled to her feet. She stared down and noticed for the first time that both her ankles were covered in red blood, although she could not recognize what had actually happened and had no idea why she was bleeding. Her brows furrowed slightly, causing the wrinkles on the bridge of her nose to deepen as she tried to understand the situation, but eventually, she gave up trying to comprehend what had happened and just kept looking back at the scene that had just occurred in front of her. She slowly pushed herself back onto her feet and looked around to make sure that no one else was nearby and that nobody had seen her fall, then slowly walked backwards for a few more steps, keeping her hands clenched tightly onto the straps of her backpack while also trying to stay completely unnoticed. Her eyes widened slightly as she caught sight of the body that was laying face down at her side, as well as of the bloodstains scattered everywhere and the large amount of scratches and marks that decorated its white, clean clothes and skin. Even more shocking than the bloody mess surrounding her was the sight of the person itself. The young man that lay lifeless on the floor of the corridor was clearly dead. From the looks of the wounds that had appeared on his skin, he must have had a terrible fight that resulted in his death, but that didn't seem right. His face looked as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer, and there were a few cuts and scratches on his neck and chest, but there were no signs of anything being broken or dislocated. And as Kaede looked at the state of the body in front of her, she knew that there was more to it than just getting beaten up by another student. She looked over at the young man that lay in front of her and began examining his injuries, trying to find the best way to handle the problem at hand. She didn't know how to remove all the blood from the body without accidentally hurting the poor guy further, and she wasn't confident that she could somehow avoid injuring the injured party without injuring his vital organs, so she decided that she needed to treat the wound, then try to identify the person, and hopefully find out what had happened to him, in order to save his life. So she turned the body over on to its back. As she lifted his upper body off the floor, she noticed that there wasn't a pulse anywhere in his neck and the wounds around his neck were deep, indicating that they had been inflicted on the corpse by somebody. After confirming that there wasn't any heartbeat in the body, Kaede carefully placed the boy back onto the floor and then proceeded to examine his wounds. The wounds surrounding his neck were shallow, but the ones on his torso were quite deep. They seemed to indicate that someone had grabbed hold of a piece of broken glass and had stabbed the boy repeatedly multiple times using it, causing his wound to bleed quite badly. The blood flowing from the stab wound had dried up after a few hours had passed, but it was clear that someone had injected something in it, like anaesthetic, to stop the bleeding and to stop the skin from getting infected. It would have to be disinfected later. After looking closely at the wound, Kaede discovered that it was definitely not the work of an ordinary person. She could tell from where the skin around the wound was torn and scratched, but it did not appear to be from any sharp object, but rather like somebody had tried to cut through a piece of meat with a knife. However, whoever had committed the crime seemed to have been in a frenzy and hadn't taken note of their actions. "I can't believe that a stranger who was obviously out to get me could commit a crime against a teacher!" Kaede thought to herself as she studied the wound. She had never heard of anybody committing murder inside Hope's Peak Academy, so it was extremely strange that a crime had been committed. The only explanation Kaede could think of that might possibly fit the case was that maybe the student had tried to escape and had managed to break into one of the buildings here and had somehow ended up stabbing the teacher who was guarding one of them, then ran off, leaving his body in this hallway. That didn't seem like something a normal person would do though; he would have either taken care of the body, gone back to the classroom and reported it to the security guards inside, or he would have killed himself afterwards to prevent anyone from reporting him to authorities. If there was one thing certain about the incident that had occurred earlier today, it would be that the student responsible for the crime had run off, because there was absolutely no sign that he had been attacked by someone or that there had ever been violence of any kind whatsoever. In addition, he hadn't done anything suspicious at all. He was merely lying on the ground with a gaping hole in his body, but there wasn't anything suspicious about that at all either. It seemed like this crime had been committed by a very simple act of senselessness and not because someone wanted to harm or kill someone.