#give me puppets and make up and exagerated acting

[lutheban]

i think the modern insistence on trying so desperately to ground our fiction in reality might have severely undercut our ability to enjoy stories actually

[luluvsumineko]

Okay ive bern thinking about it for a bit, letting the results of ep 2 simmer knside me for a bit, and i think i have a theory, however flimsy, about who the culprits are and how they did it.

The culprit is Genji, with a possibility that Shanon was an accomplice

As Rosa suspected, the locked rooms are easily solved if you consider the master keys that each servant has: jessica and kanon were killed, jessica someones master key on her body, kanons body was moved, and the killer locked the room with their own master key.

The reason i suspect Genji and Shanon is because they act as each others alibi, but if they were accompices to each other then that wouldnt matter. But then theres the issue of kinzo, he can corroberate their alibis.

But i dont think kinzo could. I think kinzo was already killed by genji and kanon at that time. zsimilar to the first game, he was likely killed earlier and intended to be found later on. But something happens later that throws a wrench in that plan.

As far as i can tell, nanjo, kumasawa and gohda were in the kitchen at this time, and i want to go with the simpler idea that there are less accomplices, so my suspiscion falls to genji and kanon. But my suspiscions become more concrete with the next incident.

In the incident when the fake kanon supposedly attacked everyone, genji and shanon seem to calmly take control of the situation. My theory is that the two of them were puppeting kanons corpse and used the act to accomplish two things: kill two of the remaining servants, and leave one as a "witness" who believed that the undead kanon killed them. I dont know if shanon and genji intended for gohda to be left alive, or if that was a decision in the heat of tge moment, but i think that they may have intended to kill nanjo here for a theory i have later

This is where i try to solve the locked room puzzle of the servants room: it was the same as jessicas room. The key they took from kanon and jessica was placed in the room with the letter when gohda wasnt looking, the bodies were dragged away, and either nanjo or shanon locked the room from the outside.

But heres where my stupid big brain idea comes in: when rosa was collecting the servamts master keys, shanon didnt actually give her key away, she gave her a false key. During the servant room murders, shanon briefly left to go get some cobwebs from the boiler room, but i think she also retrieved this fake key at that time. Considering that the culprit intentionally tried setting up locked rooms, they were likely trying to draw suspision to the servants master keys. If the culprit was a servant, it would make sense they would make a false key to give away to then draw attention away from themself.

From here, one of two things happen: when shanon went to the boiler room she left her real master key there so that genji coild pick it up later, or she descreetly handed it off to genji when no one noticed. I think they then intended to lure george and gohda to natsuhi's room kill and hide their bodies there, but one of two things happened:

One. Shanon and genji killed the two, and shanon disguised herself as a dead body in order trick the others. Since they earlier killed nanjo, it would be easier to trick people since no one could properly identify whether she was alive or not. However the thing that kinda disproves this theory was when battler examined shanons corpse he noticed that the wound on her forehead was very deep. This could have been battler being dramatic and exagerating, but i think thats unlikely.

And Two. I think that during the attack on george and gohda, one of them fought back and killed shanon. This was obviously not part of the plan, but genji had to roll with it. He disguised shanons death as one of the twilights, locked the door from the outside with shanons master key, and then started work on propping up nanjo amd kumasawas bodies. I think genji and shanon intended for kinzos body to appear at this time too, but since shanon died, genji decided to keep it hidden.

And yeah, thats pretty much it