There's definitely something wrong with this murder mystery game

Second-floor corridor.

The piano player chased after the female writer who had turned to leave, asking, "Where are you going?"

Without turning her head, the female writer said, "To ask my husband what he discovered."

The piano player immediately stopped in his tracks, his lips twitching.

Was their collaboration over so soon?

But after a moment, the female writer also stopped, turned around with a look of helplessness, and said, "The speculation you provided for me just now isn't entirely groundless, but we still lack key evidence."

"If we had the equipment, we could actually test the blood directly," the piano player said regretfully.

"Forget it, now's not the time; we should start going over the events of that evening," the female writer said, seemingly agitated by whatever had happened in front of the blind girl's door just before.

"We need to figure out where we were at that time," she stressed.

"Right."

Agreeing, the female writer turned the corner onto another corridor, with the piano player following suit.

Just as they were turning away, the dancer, leading Xu Shuo, came up the spiral staircase, heading towards the piano room.

Xu Shuo paused briefly, glancing at the corridor they had just left, but said nothing.

The piano room was built at the corner of the villa, probably intended as another bedroom, so it was very spacious, and the loft was the space between its ceiling and the sloping roof.

The stairs leading to the loft were on the side of the piano room.

...

The second-floor balcony of the villa was open-air. Pushing open the door, one was greeted by an expanse of pitch-black sky, without the slightest hint of stars or moonlight.

The only light came from the electric lamps inside the villa, their warm yellow glow casting a mild luminance on the balcony where potted plants, devoid of any visible vibrancy, seemed to be shrouded in a layer of black mist.

To the left of the balcony sat a swing chair, and in the center a white round table and high stools were placed, with a decor that leaned towards casual relaxation.

"Is the last entry in your diary about having a candlelight dinner here?" the piano player asked thoughtfully.

"Having dinner, listening to music, and even taking photographs," the female writer said. "From here to the piano room, it normally takes about two minutes to walk."

"If the candlelight dinner actually happened last night, then what was I doing playing the piano at that time?"

"Hmm, because I've been puzzled, if you were there at the time, how could you have just let me and the lawyer argue to the point of physical altercation?" the female writer frowned.

"What if I also wanted you dead?" the piano player speculated boldly.

But rather than a speculation, it was more of a leap in thought.

Ignoring him, the female writer walked to the balcony's edge and peered into the abyssal darkness below, then said, "I had time to take a photo and write in my journal, so it should have been after dinner when the servants might come up to clear the table."

The piano player remembered when they woke up earlier, the male servant was still holding a rag.

Actually, when the piano player turned on the light, he had noticed the red cufflink on his sleeve, which was as conspicuous as the musical note brooch on the female writer's chest.

So, he took it off.

And apart from the cufflink, there was also an unfinished score. Could it be that he was playing the piano when the incident occurred?

"Around that time on the second floor, there could have been me and the lawyer, who had finished dinner, you in the piano room, and the maid cleaning up," the female writer continued.

"A classic trio to choose from?" said the piano player, his mind racing.

"What the blind girl, the dancer, the cook were doing at the time isn't clear," the female writer frowned.

"And the places on the second floor where bloodstains were found included only the smashed vase in the corridor and the stair railing," the piano player said seriously, looking at her.

"Alright, then according to your previous speculation, did I die from being smashed or from falling?"

The female writer didn't want to quickly find out the cause of her own death, but there were simply too many dead people in this villa. Among the many possible causes of death, what if yours was the least likely one?

You think you were killed by a blunt object, but in fact, you were shot.

You think you fell to your death, but actually, you were dismembered.

The piano player suddenly said, "Do you have a pen?"

The female writer glanced at him, took out the notebook she carried with her, pulled out the fountain pen that was clipped into the binder rings, and handed him both the notebook and the pen.

The piano player took it, flipped open to the last page, and scribbled and doodled for a while, finally showing her the page.

[On the various ways humans can die:

[① Smashed head with a vase.

[② Fall death due to head hitting the sharp edge of a staircase banister.

[③ Throat slit cutting the carotid artery.

[④ Gunshot.

[⑤ Dismemberment.]

And the female writer's name was recorded under ① and ②.

The piano player said, "These are the homicide scenes we've discovered so far, so let's just use the process of elimination to figure out the other people's causes of death, and we should be able to guess our own."

The female writer leaned in to look at the records on the page, narrowed her eyes slightly, "Why do you think you're number three?"

This guy had written his name under ③.

The piano player's expression remained unchanged, "The lawyer's previous speculations had some merit, but the fact is both you and I, as well as the lawyer himself, could possibly be number three."

Among everyone's heights, the blind girl was the shortest at 1.6 meters, followed by the dancer; the tallest was the male servant, around 1.85 meters, then the tall, robust chef.

The piano player and the female writer were in the middle, indeed the most likely to be the blood-sprayed position's corpse, but the lawyer's height was actually not that different.

However, during the earlier speculations, the lawyer automatically excluded himself.

It was either a deliberate neglect of his own death, shifting the focus away, or the other party already had other valid clues.

The piano player tended towards the latter.

Hearing this, the female writer nodded, "Alright, let's assume that for now. So what now, do we go to exchange information with the others? But just now, because of speculation about 'the murderer,' I guess everyone is unlikely to tell the truth about themselves."

What she didn't say was that she felt everyone was a suspect in the murder.

The piano player shrugged, "It's inevitable, let's go find your husband. He seems to have been staying on the second floor."

Having turned away from the balcony, the female writer glanced at the darkness that had already spread to the railing outside and frowned uncomfortably.

…

Walking along the corridor with slightly dim lighting, the female writer suddenly remembered something and said, "By the way, why didn't you mark down the blind girl?"

No one's name was recorded under the method of death ④.

As the piano player looked thoughtfully at the notebook, he casually said, "You don't really think that the blind girl would just sit there and get shot, do you?"

The female writer didn't speak.

"Even those with limited mobility will take some action when their lives are threatened, unless that person already wants to die," the piano player spoke slowly. "Besides, blind people have very good hearing, she might not even be oblivious to someone targeting her."

…

The female writer neither agreed nor disagreed, but she heard another implication—suicide.