Chapter 287: Movie Viewing Party (1/2)

–The Next Day–

Not being able to go against the somewhat languid atmosphere drifting about inside the ship, I spent time relaxing on a sofa inside the break space. Mimi sat on the floor just below me, using my stomach as a backrest, while the mechanic sisters sandwiched me between the two of them. By the way, Mei was hugging my neck from behind the sofa. Hence, the soft sensation enveloping my head felt quite good.

“……Aren’t you guys feeling stuffy or something?”

Elma, who was already drinking beer even though it was still daytime, rolled her eyes as she sat a little ways away from the rest of us.

“Uh, not really.”

“It’s because I’m adjusting the temperature to be more comfortable for you, Master.”

Right. Mei’s body that was touching the back of my head and neck was refreshingly cool. It looks like her in-built cooling system was running at full capacity. As expected, she was the perfect maid. She constantly does things no ordinary maids are able to do.

By the way, we’re currently having a retro movie viewing party inside the break space using the data chips I’ve collected so far. It seems there were a lot of horror movies inside the data chip I tried out this time around. We were all lined up on the sofa normally as we watched at first, but before I knew it, they were all stuck to me like glue.

By the way, the movie that was currently playing was a suspense horror-thriller in which crew members of a starship were killed one after another as the ship was navigating the hyperlane. The remaining crew members ended up suspecting one another to be the murderer, and in the end, they resorted to holding a vote. Those who had the most votes were then chucked outside into the hyperlane. Of course, if you’re expelled within a hyperlane, you’d most likely die or be considered as missing, without anyone being sure of your ultimate fate.

“The culprit should be Blue. He’s just a tad bit too desperate to prove that he ain’t the murderer.”

“Hmm? Don’t you think it’s Green, Big Sis? Because Blue was always with Black at the time of the last murder, right?”

“But isn’t it suspicious that Black has been too aggressive in pushing for the reduction of the number of the crew after Purple got expelled?”

“It did feel like he was egging the others on to expel other crew members. He hid his mouth when Purple was expelled from the ship, but it seemed like he was hiding a smile instead of being sad about what happened.”

“You sure notice a lot of small details…… I didn’t notice anything at all.”

“Isn’t that because you’re already drunk from beer……?”

Blue, Green, and Black were the names of the characters. Or rather, they were their codenames or callsigns. It was actually quite easy to remember because they all wore uniforms that matched the color used as their codenames.

By the way, Mei hasn’t participated in our amateur detective roleplay as we tried to deduce who the real culprit was. After all, if Mei seriously analyzed this kind of thing, there’s a very high chance she’d solve the mystery in an instant.

By the way, when it appeared that they were finally able to get rid of the real culprit during the last act of the movie, it was revealed that there was another traitor lurking among them. The final scene depicted the remaining murderer killing the rest of the remaining crew one by one. The movie ended while the expressionless murderer was in the middle of heading off with weapon in hand in order to finish off the last surviving crew member.

“So there were actually two culprits.”

“Black really was a traitor, just like Hiro-sama said.”

“That was nice. They made Green seem like an obvious villain that the rest managed to defeat after a tense action sequence, only to give us that final twist in the end.”

“The scenes where the crew members were killed off one after another were scary, and the desperate pleas of the expelled people were amazingly acted as well.”

“Maybe they really were thrown out to the hyperlane during the filming of the movie you know. And that’s why it was so realistic.”

“Don’t say something so scary. It’s giving me goosebumps.”

It wasn’t a snuff film y’know…… Well, the filming equipment in this world had developed a lot, so it wasn’t too farfetched to think that what we watched wasn’t a movie but an edited version of real events. Anyway, judging from the credit roll, this was definitely a movie…… Oh, and I also like watching blooper scenes as the credits roll. Yep.