“Mysterious beakers in our lab! And they’re broken! What on earth!?”
“What on earth―!”
“We must solve this mystery! In the name of the chemistry club!”
“FOOOOOOOO!”
“This is strange, the chemistry club isn’t a group of detectives… this is strange…”
Maito-san and Toriumi shouted with a strange energy.
I don’t think we need to do this in the name of the chemistry club, but since we’re already involved, or something like that.
Now that we know, it’s not in my nature to ignore where this beaker came from.
If there’s an imitation beaker, where in this school could it be?
The conclusion was reached rather quickly.
“Thanks to my deductive skills, I have a pretty good idea where the beaker came from!”
“Oh, already?”
I’m a bit surprised at Toriumi’s quick deduction.
Toriumi notices small details and is good at connecting dots, so he might be a natural at solving mysteries.
“So, where is it from!”
“The drama club!”
The drama club, huh. It’s not unreasonable to think they might have a beaker as a prop.
“Last week, Shido was writing a script called ‘Laboratory ~The Invincible Love of a Science Girl~'”
“That’s not even a deduction!”
…Ah, Shido, I remember. He’s a member of the drama club. I heard about him before because he’s already writing scripts as a first-year student.
But indeed, ‘Laboratory ~The Invincible Love of a Science Girl~’. Given the title, it’s not surprising that a beaker would be used as a prop.
“I’m really curious about the content of that play… what’s with that title.”
“Hmm? It’s an American action comedy where a science girl uses yellow staphylococcus and a bazooka to destroy a lab and rescue her lover from an evil organization.”
“I really want to see that play.”
Let’s not delve into the content of the play.
“Ah, so they might have accidentally broken the beaker with the bazooka during practice…”
“Even if they did, they should have disposed of it properly. Why bring it to the chemistry lab?”
I don’t think the cause of the breakage was the bazooka, but let’s set that aside.
“Maybe they didn’t know how to dispose of it?”
Maito-san, Toriumi, and I stared at each other, then nodded solemnly.
“That’s true. We don’t usually get opportunities to dispose of broken glass at school.”
“Bottles and cans are one thing, but broken glass requires different handling.”
Broken items are usually put in paper bags or double-wrapped in plastic and labeled ‘broken item’ before being thrown away.
In the chemistry lab, glass waste is usually disposed of that way… but if glass waste was produced elsewhere, it’s true that people unfamiliar with the process might struggle.
Of course, that’s not a reason to throw it in the chemistry lab’s glass waste bin.
“Hmm… or maybe they thought it would be safest to dispose of it here because it was covered in chemicals.”
“What kind of chemicals would the drama club be using, anyway?”
In a world where you can make tear gas with materials from the dollar store, it’s not surprising what the drama club might have, but…
Even if it’s not surprising, it’s not natural.
“Why would someone go out of their way to throw a beaker in the chemistry lab…? Hmm, oh, could it be because it was a beaker?”
“Like a feeling of returning it to its homeland after it died?”
Toriumi’s comment was followed by a remark from Maito-san. The homeland of a beaker, what could that be?
“Homeland or not, it’s an interior decoration beaker… even if they wanted to return it, they’re returning it to the wrong country…”
That’s true. There’s no reason to specifically return an interior beaker to the chemistry lab.
…Wait.
“Could it be that the person who owned the beaker and the person who cleaned it up are different?”
We understood that this beaker was for interior decoration, but probably, anyone not involved in chemistry and not handling beakers daily wouldn’t distinguish between an interior beaker and a proper experimental one. They might not even know there’s a difference. I’d prefer not to think such people exist.
…However, if that’s the case, the presence of the interior beaker here isn’t inexplicable.
‘The person who cleaned up the beaker thought it was an experimental beaker. So, they threw it away in the chemistry lab.’
This makes sense.
Since the cleaner thinks it’s a broken experimental beaker, they would have reported it to one of the teachers. We can verify this theory by asking.
“Oh, if they thought it belonged to the chemistry lab, they’d bring it here. Makes sense.”
“Let’s ask the teacher!”
Without delay, Toriumi opened the door to the chemistry prep room, walked through, and knocked on the chemistry lab door.
…Then, we heard what seemed like Toriumi talking to the teachers.
“…I’m going to tell you exactly what happened!”
Alright.
“If someone broke a lab beaker and brought it here, they would have reported it to one of the science teachers, but none of the teachers know about it… you might not understand what I’m saying.”
“No, I understand, so it’s okay.”
“It’s very CEO-like not to let me finish.”
Hmm.
“Do none of the teachers really know about it?”
“Yeah. Actually, the teachers recently emptied the glass waste pot because it was full after Maito-san broke some test tubes.”
The teachers received no reports.
Moreover, ‘the glass waste pot was emptied once.’
Yet now, the glass waste pot ‘contains other trash besides the beaker.’
…It seems this is not an ‘accident’ but an ‘incident.’
Toriumi spread out a newspaper on the desk and Katori eagerly overturned the glass waste pot onto it.
With a clatter, the glass clinked against each other and spread across the newspaper.
“Suddenly, I feel like doing a jigsaw puzzle… a very 3D puzzle.”
Toriumi stood in front of it with hands poised like a surgeon before an operation.
“Oh, look, there’s a fun-looking 3D puzzle here!”
Katori stood beside Toriumi in the same pose.
“Hey! Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! Don’t stick your hand in there! You’ll cut yourself! If you’re not careful, you’ll cut your fingers! Puzzles are fine, but wear gloves, wear gloves!”
Maito-san flew over with gloves in hand.
…And so, until more club members arrive, it seems inevitable that we would engage in a bit of puzzling ourselves.
“Which part is this from… definitely not the bottom.”
“Ugh, this glass shard feels slimy.”
“Huh, oil? Olive oil? Sesame oil?”
“Well, it’s colorless, so I don’t think it’s olive oil or sesame oil.”
“Then rice bran oil? Oh, wait, baby oil and mineral oil are also clear oils. Yeah.”
“It’s best not to touch it too much. This is a chemistry lab, after all. There’s a possibility that the sliminess is from Toriumi’s fingertips dissolved by sodium hydroxide.”
“Stop it, stop it, don’t turn this into a horror story!”
When four idle chemistry club members gather, a glass 3D puzzle isn’t a difficult task. Especially since the three others here besides me are quite handy.
“Whoa, now that I look closely, this is weird! There’s not a single piece that looks like the bottom of a test tube! No rounded pieces at all!”
“Considering how many test tubes were broken, it’s strange that there’s not one piece from the bottom. Maybe we should have noticed earlier.”
Incidentally, Maito-san broke a bunch of test tubes by tripping over a gallon bottle of ethanol and knocking over a whole test tube rack. She broke six test tubes in one go.
Yet, there’s not a single piece that looks like the bottom of a test tube. There are curved pieces, but they’re just parts of the cylindrical walls.
“…Hey, this is wider than a test tube.”
“Really is. Maybe it’s a graduated cylinder?”
“No, it’s too narrow for that. And if it were a graduated cylinder, it would have markings.”
And so, we continued talking while working on the glass 3D puzzle.
As we continued, the glass shards gradually began to form a shape, roughly becoming one object.
“What is… this?”
“A tube?”
Due to parts that shattered into powder, the restoration rate is about 50%.
It’s roughly 50-60 cm in length. It’s a straight tube… with parts of the glass melted around the edge of a hole.
What is this…
“…Ah, I get it now.”
Looking at the finished object, Toriumi made a solemn face.
“What do you understand?”
“Has the great detective arrived!?”
As Katori and Maito-san chimed in, Toriumi nodded calmly, then said,
“I’m going to get some acetone.”
“What… what?”
“Acetone?”
Acetone, huh. That’s sudden.
“Well, before that! The culprit isn’t the drama club! And the biggest victim in this case is…”
With a swift motion, Toriumi pointed at the beaker shards.
“This beaker! …For now!”
“What exactly do you mean by that, Detective Toriumi?”
“I have a bad feeling about this…”
Nodding to Maito-san and Katori’s words, Toriumi made a serious face.
“We should hurry to solve this. Otherwise, we might become the biggest victims.”