Huh. It seems a little early for that big a clue, but okay. Top suspect is Rose Bud. Oh, and she said she was a goat whisperer, too... Think she knows she's the killer? If she is, that is. I don't think there's anyone with a bird name, although a few of us have wings. Maybe origami? Or something to do with the box? The pearls of the necklace? The book, Caring For Perennials (although that could just be about the garden)? The lamp? The chopsticks? The desk?? *desk jealousy* 

Will we get to see the blueprints, by any chance? Probably not if they're top secret, unless someone else finds the room. Great, now I want to find it. It must be possible--someone did it, after all. I wonder who. 

I wonder what the note meant? The one Poison wrote before she died? Should we check out the bathroom walls? The ryokan entrance?

Day 6

Summer was outdoors spraying the ryokan with Zeamaizeock repellent, and everyone was required to remain indoors until she was completed. To pass the time, the guests were mingling in the front room, on any devices the grounp had brought, marveling over anonymous's photos.

"What do you think the square thing is?"

"I wonder what's in the hollow book."

"How many secret areas do you think there are?"

I was watching them speculate my secrets from a... hmm... a hole in the... wall. Not worth investigation in any way. Certainly not.

Fireburst spoke up.

"So... which one of us actually found the secret room?"

Silence. 

"If we could find it again, then..."

More silence.

As the silence continued, I exited my place of concealment and walked around into the main room.

"The person who found the room," I said, "was Poison." 

Everyone was so shocked that no one questioned how I knew what they were talking about.

"But Poison's... dead." 

I nodded with a very ambiguous expression.

Spyro flew up to the ceiling and began flying around, screaming "Coincidence!? I think NOT" repeatedly. I ignored him until he began blowing small balls of fire to the floor.

"Stop scorching my tatami at once!" I shouted. Many AEs, fed up with the tension of their vacation, started chanting "Coincidence?! I think NOT" as some CBers watched in amusement and other attempted to alleviate the chaos.

Summer walked back inside, carring a sprayer.

"Dinner is served," she said, and squirted her sprayer into Spyro's mouth.

Everyone stopped and gasped.

"Don't worry. He'll survive." 

Spryo coughed. "This is VINEGAR."

"Hey, it works."

~~~ 

Later that evening, the fire alarms went off. Everyone fled the building as I hunted for the sprinkler system. I eventually found it and prevented the entire ryokan from burning down. 

We all went inside to investigate the rooms. It appeared that a fire was set in both Ann's and Spyro's rooms, respectively.

In both rooms there was nothing but ash. Unfortunatly for Spyro, his donuts had gotton all melty again.

Unfortunatly for Ann, she slept through it all.

~End of day 6. Death Toll: Thirteen

Jwyn- broken neck

Inkling, Eliana, Hibiki Starlight, Rose Bud's Sam, Wildflower, Leeli and Viri- dragon

Agent Winter- drowned

Dream- strangled

Poison- poisoned

Blue Moon- eaten by a Zeamaizock

Ann- arsoned

P.S:

The square thing is an ink pad.

Hang on.

So, Poison is dead, but somehow managed to get into the secret room?

This is a dumb theory, but perhapse Poison isn't really dead. 

Day 7

The guests were frightened, suspicious, and upset, but now they were also curious in a way that verged on excited. 

The fire-damaged part of the building was deemed just safe enough not to be taped off, although everyone was urged to take caution. Sukāretto and I added a few pillars just in case. While we did, the guests went exploring. I left the task early to watch.

Claaws, Fireburst and Viola? led the way, with Shy Peacock, Sam, Celeste, hotairballon and Pooki P close behind. The remaining guests followed as well, the allure of the well-numbered search too stromg to resist.

They inspected the baths first, under the guise of taking one, before we even began the pillar work. It was startling how quickly they found it, simply looking closely and running their hands over the tiles, testing for any that moved or sat a hair out of place. 

"I never noticed how uneven these were," Rose Bud remarked to Secret. Secret was one of few who would come near her after the pictures were posted. Rose Bud was visibly uncomfortable as well, smiling less, spending more time alone. 

"Me, too. Oh--" Secret pried at one tile in particular. It did not move. She pushed, twisted, gave up. "False alarm."

"Maybe the next one," Rose Bud said.

"Maybe." Secret side eyed her. "Hey... Can I ask you something?"

"This is just a matter of area covered," Sam said loftily, on the other side of the room.

"Like how much of it we look at?" Celeste asked.

"Yes! We should spread out more. Come on, let's look over here."

They moved a few steps to the right.

"So, um, how are you doing?"

Sam pursed her lips. "That's a good question."

"It's fine if you don't want to talk about it," Celeste assured her.

"Eh. It's just... she was my CBer. I spent all this time trying to keep her out of trouble, and..." 

Her hand had closed into a fist, and she opened it.

"I'm just thinking... I failed. What do I do now?"

Spyro sat by the door, dissatisfied, having calloused and insensitive toes behind his long, sharp claws. "This investigation is meaningless!" he said, though no one was paying him any mind. He took a bite of melty donut--here I stifled the urge to break cover and remove him from the area--and continued with his soliloquy. "Obviously there's nothing here. The note was a fake to send you chasing wild geese. I'll find the murderer without it and destroy them with tooth and flame!"

"Why don't you do it right now, then?" MJ snapped. 

"Well... I haven't, er, finished my donut yet," Spyro blustered.

"Oh, forget it," Claaws sighed, and moved on to a new patch of tiles.

Just then, Viola? made a small noise of surprise, having pulled a tile out of place. Guests rushed to see.

"I found it! It's--oop!"

The tile fell, and she snatched at it, just barely managing to keep it out of the water. Fireburst, Tuxedo Kitten and Noon were already peering through the hole.

"What is it?"

"There's nothing there."

"No, there's a room." 

"Ictn seee!"

"I think it's empty?"

"Cool." 

"It's hard to tell."

"Can I see?" 

"This hole is too small. There's just a wall with nothing on it."

"Really?"

"Well, if it's the secret room, we know where it is now."

"It's the same color as all the rest of them."

"Wait, what room is supposed to be on the other side of this wall? Maybe we can find out."

"I think someone would've noticed a hole in the wall..."

"All the more evidence for it being the secret room!"

Most of the guests exited immediately to look. They eventually discovered, with much confusion and bickering about direction, that the hole did not in fact appear in any wall near the baths from the outside. The inevitable conclusion was quickly reached; it must be the secret room.

There was briefly an idea to break through the wall, but it was discouraged, partly by my sudden appearance out of the shadows to inform the guest responsible that the ryokan would not tolerate such extensive intentional damage to its property. The guests opted instead to disperse, accumulating once more in the entrance.

There was not much to guide them here; only two words, and synonymous ones at that, if one assumed 'fron' would have been completed as 'front', which Sam and Kate-the-Great did. 

"Front... We're here. Why would she say it twice?" Kate wondered.

"It was incomplete," Sam mused. "Maybe..."

"There was more?" Aspen suggested, having overheard. 

"More what?" Rose Bud asked.

"Oh, um," Sam stuttered.

"Nothing," Kate interjected.

Rose Bud's face fell, and she walked off. Allie leaned in towards the awkward trio like a cartoon, MJ by her side.

"Really though, what?" 

"More to the note," Aspen explained.

"It said 'entrance: fron', so what if something was supposed to come after?" Kate continued.

"Like door," Sam suggested.

"Or step," MJ added.

"Or desk," Aspen finished. 

"Where should we look?" Allie asked.

Kate-the-Great was already running. "Everywhere!"

The group and its targeted searches attracted attention. Any direction was better than none. It wasn't long before Darkfeather walked under the front desk and looked up. It also wasn't long before Byann, having discovered a perfect place to create a little chaos, found his passion for causing destruction abruptly take a tragic turn in the form of three heavy wooden pillars, most of a roof and some debris of walls on his head.

~End of Day 7. Death toll: Fourteen.

Inkling, Eliana, Hibiki Starlight, Rose Bud's Sam, Wildflower, Leeli and Viri of dragons.

Jwyn of a broken neck. 

Agent Winter of drowning.

Dream of strangling.

Poison of poisoning.

Blue Moon of a Zeamaizock.

Ann of burning.

Byann of being crushed. 

Suspect list:

Rose bud

Sukaretto

Blue Moon

Viola?

Notes on the suspect list (in least likely to most likely order):

- Blue Moon because she was found with popcorn, which was stolen at the same time as the deadly poison. However, if it was Blue, than we have multiple murderers on our hands, unless ghosts can interact with the living world enough to set fires. This makes it unlikely that she is the murderer, and raises the question of why someone would plant the popcorn on her to frame/kill her.

- Viola? because she mysteriously dissappeared around the time of Agent Winter's murder.

- Sukaretto because he threatened bad things if someone found his room, and then a day after Poison did just that, she was found dead (Coincidence?! I think NOT!). She also wrote something about a hole in the wall, which is where Sukaretto was hiding on day 6. This is especially suspicious because the popcorn went missing around the time that the poison went missing, and then the popcorn ended up on Blue Moon, causing her to be killed by the Zeamaizeock. 

- Rose bud because, well most of the clues point to her. The note about roses having thorns in the secret room, the fact that she was close by at the time of all of the murders. The fact that she said that she likes acting and was VERY histerical after the first death. She said she was a goat whisperer, and then Blue Moon was murdered by a giant goat. However, this is made less suspicious by the fact that this is VERY obvious, and we have faith that the writer of this ski lodge is better than that.

Misc. Notes and Questions: 

- Sukaretto seems to know a lot of very handy secret passages; we should search those.

- Isn't it interesting that we found the secret room on day 3? For something so well-hidden, it seems like it would take us longer to find it. In fact, something so well hidden might have a decoy, for protection. It would also make it very easy for us all to suspect Sukaretto for killing Poison, and not suspect the true murderer.

- If Sukaretto was so mad about someone posting pictures of his room, why did he post a picture himself?

MUCH THEORIES. VERY MUCH NOTES AND THEORIES. So. How did you like it? What do you think? @Summer or Sukaretto, could I maybe have some version of this in a notebook in-lodge?