メルカトルと美袋のための殺人

Mercator Ayu, who himself says his suberb and rapid skills as detective make him tend more towards short stories, and his friend Minagi Sanjou bring the reader 7 of their shared experiences. Most of these are indeed, as the title already hints at, crimes that are constituted the way they are due to Mercator's and/or Minagi's relatedness.

i(アイ)鏡に消えた殺人者

Novelist Sunamura Etsuko is found murdered in a locked room situation in her own apartment. Bloody footprints are left leading from her corpse over to a full-length mirror and disappearing in front of it on the very spot. What is also found at the crime scene is a manuscript of her autobiographic short story dealing with her fear of mirrors. Is her supposedly dead cousin Ai staring at her from inside the mirror...?

緋色の囁き

Being related to the principle's family tree and therefore taken from her adoptive parents, Izumi Saeko becomes a transfer student of the reputable Seishin Girls' Academy and starts living in its dorm. Her roommate Takatori Kei seems like a kind person to get along with, but Kei herself thinks it would be better for Saeko to not get involved with her, leaving her with the mysterious statement "I'm a witch" before she is found burned to death in a forbidden room of the dorm where another girl died the exact same way 35 years ago. From that night on fear and suspicion prevail among the students and what was regarded by the teachers as possible suicide finds its continuance in clear murders afterwards. The scarlet whisper crawling up from Saeko's forgotten inner self and her continuous sleepwalking and strange dreams make her doubt herself. Might she actually be the culprit...?