The Berlin Fried Bread Mystery (Part 1) | Contents | The Berlin Fried Bread Mystery (Part 3)
The Newspaper Club was using the Printing Preparation Room on the first floor as their club room. The door was ajar, so I peeked in to see what they were up to before completing my task.
On some occasion, Doujima Kengo had described it to me as a space that was poorly organized, but in reality it was a lot more chaotic than I’d imagined. Stacks upon stacks of paper, a whiteboard, even more stacks of paper, and for some reason, a small refridgerator. Right in front of the door, a large table stood in the middle of the room, taking up a sizable proportion of the limited space available. On the left and right, a few one-person desks and chairs were tucked near the walls.
A white plate was placed on top of the big table, and four students were peering at the plate with serious looks on their faces. One of them spotted me. That was Doujima Kengo, a male student of great physique whom you wouldn’t imagine to be a Newspaper Club member if you didn’t know him personally.
“Oh, it’s Jougorou. What’s the matter?”
Was that his way of greeting me?
“I’ve brought the responses for the survey that the Newspaper Club distributed.”
“Ah.”
Commendably, Kengo realized his mistake and put on an embarrassed face.
“I see, my bad. That was fast.”
“You could have collected it by yourselves.”
“That makes sense, but we don’t have the manpower to go around to every class.”
I handed over the survey responses, and my job was done. I thought of heading home, but noticed that the room had a strange atmosphere. The fact that four of them were sitting silently around a table was meaningful, and though it might have just been my imagination, they seemed to be probing each other with their eyes. I was about to ask Kengo if something had happened, when he crossed his arms and let out a small sigh.
“…Jogorou, you free now?”
“I don’t have any plans in particular.”
“Good. Actually, we’re a bit troubled right now. Mind hearing us out and giving us some advice?”
I’d promised to walk the path of the petit bourgeois with Osanai-san. Such aspirants should not be sticking their head into the worries of an unrelated group.
However, when it was none other than Kengo who sought my help, I couldn’t refuse at all. It was a tough decision, but if I could lend just a bit of strength to Kengo, it wouldn’t be a problem for me no matter what this consultation was about.
“Fine, but what happened?”
“You sure look happy…”
No, it was a tough decision.
The other three people in the room sent reproachful looks at Kengo. I didn’t know what had happened, but it was natural to feel uncomfortable at him unilaterally asking advice from an outsider. A boy with a plump figure spoke, his words dripping with irritation.
“Oi Doujima, what are you doing? Are you really telling him?”
“It’s not like we want to keep it a secret, and it’s better than us staring at each other the entire time. Maybe one of us can figure it out in our heads when we talk to someone else about it. Moreover… Kobato Jogorou sometimes never fails to notice some strange details.”
What a circuitous evaluation. The other boy looked disatisfied, but apparently didn’t want to pick a fight with Kengo, for all he said was, “What’s that supposed to mean?” before lapsing into silence.
“What do you think, Makishima, Sugi? Shall we consult him?”
The two girls exchanged glances, after which the taller and thinner one gave a short answer.
“It’s fine, isn’t it?”
“Right, it’s decided, then.”
With a nod, Kengo first added the survey sheets in his hand to a mountain of documents by the wall. Next, he pointed at the plate on the big table, and spoke gravely.
“This is the problem.”
The plate was white, round, about twenty centimeters in diameter, and had nothing on it.
“Ah, basically… it’s a plate, right?”
“Just be quiet and listen.”
Fine.
“I didn’t know before, but there’s a kind of pastry called Berliner Pfannkuchen.”
Though I was just told to be quiet, I couldn’t help but respond.
“Ber… what now?”
“Berliner Pfannkuchen.”
“Sorry, can you repeat that again?”
“Berliner Pfannkuchen.”
I wasn’t hard of hearing, just that Kengo was speaking too quickly for me to hear well, or at least that was what I wanted to believe.
“Berliner…?”
Kengo shook his head in capitulation.
“It’s a German-style agepan1.”
I see, now I understand.
“It’s a specialty of Berlin, and as its name suggests, it’s as big as a normal fist. The bread is not just deep fried, but contains some jam. There’s a game where people prepare a lot of these agepan at the end of the year, put mustard in a few of them and see who gets the mustard.”
“So this type of game is played everywhere, huh.”
“A bakery selling German bread recently opened near school. They also deal with this agepan, so we planned to cover it in our December issue with the theme of ‘New Year Celebrations Around the World’. We asked for an interview, and they agreed to it. So, we thought that we shouldn’t just listen, but also try out that game for ourselves, and it was decided that whoever got the donut with mustard would write the report. We got enough agepan for us, and placed them on this plate.”
That explained why the plate was on the table.
“So you all ate them together?”
The image of Kengo cramming some jam-filled agepan into his mouth upon hearing the signal to start popped up in my head, but I found it to be a little strange. Contrary to his outward appearance, Kengo is the type to fuss over the way to prepare delicious cocoa, so he should be able to handle some sweetness.
“Was it delicious?”
I asked, and for some reason, Kengo grimaced.
“That’s the problem.”
“It wasn’t delicious?”
“No, it was.”
“So it isn’t a problem, then.”
“As I said, it’s a problem. Listen, everyone in this room said it was delicious.”
Without thinking, I ran my gaze across the other three people surrounding the big table. All of them had unconvinced looks on their faces. Kengo raised his voice.
“That can’t be possible. Someone must have gotten the one with mustard in it. But the person who got it didn’t admit that they did. Even when I said to stop with the stupid jokes, everyone insisted that they didn’t take the hit.”
The plump boy cut in from the side.
“Including Doujima.”
Kengo nodded gravely.
“Yes. Including me.”
He then directed a question at me.
“Jougorou, can you figure out who ate the lucky agepan?”
That conversation made me want to apologize to Kengo. I was always under the assumption that the monthly paper the Newspaper Club publishes, Funado Monthly, would only report on boring topics, like the results of some sports meet that nobody was aware of, or the destination of the school excursion, and was neither harmful nor helpful to anyone. I never thought that they would get their hands on some German-style agepan that isn’t exactly sold everywhere and write a report on that. It was a complete misjudgment on my part. If that plan was in danger, perhaps I should try to be useful.
“I see. I don’t know if I’ll be able to figure it out, but do tell me all about it.”
After those humble words, I decided to check the names of the four people.
Needless to say, there was Doujima Kengo.
The boy with a plump body who would sometimes mutter something in displeasure was Monchi Jouji.
The tall and slender girl who didn’t hide her distrust towards me in her facial expression and actions was Makishima Midori.
The petite bespectacled girl who seemed to be confused by this turn of events was Sugi Sarako.
Besides Kengo, the three people were apparently all first-year students belonging to the Newspaper Club. They would be the “suspects”. I glanced at my watch to find that it was 4:45.
“All four of you ate the agepan, right?”
Kengo nodded.
“When you did the tasting, there were four agepan on the plate, correct?”
“Exactly.”
“And one of them contained mustard.”
“Yeah.”
Being able to speak concisely is one of Kengo’s biggest merits, but I wanted a little more prudence.
“Sorry Kengo, but could you answer only what you know to be undoubtedly true?”
He frowned, but immediately nodded and corrected himself.
“My bad. When we tried the agepan, there were four of them on the plate, and one of them supposedly contained mustard. Makishima, Monchi, Sugi and I ate one agepan each, but no one said that they got the mustard-filled one. The plate has not been moved since.”
“I see, thanks.”
Now, then…
This time, I was tasked to find the person who ate the mustard-filled agepan, or in other words, the culprit. I am not incompetent at logically reinterpreting a situation that seems impossible at first glance, or deducing what someone is hiding. However, it is extremely difficult to perfectly finger a culprit just based off deductions. To give a drastic example, it was not entirely impossible for a mysterious phantom thief to have hypnotized the Newspaper Club and made off with the mustard-filled agepan. Even if we bring things closer to reality, it was possible that someone simply made a fatal misunderstanding. If I evaluated every likelihood equivalently and considered every statement to be dubious, it would be impossible to point to the culprit with sufficient accuracy. That is why it was imperative that I first establish some premises.
One: Anything Kengo declares should be assumed to be true.
Two: This case has nothing to do with supernatural phenomena.
Three: The culprit acted rationally in their own perspective.
I could think of a few possibilities that follow these three points, but I shouldn’t be hasty, and should cement the conditions before jumping into things.
For one, it would be good to check the contents of the room.
This room is called the Printing Preparation Room, located on the first floor of the school building, and is also used by the Newspaper Club. It is next to the Printing Room, but is for some reason not connected by a door. Then again, one can immediately reach the Printing Room by exiting to the hallway, so it isn’t exactly a problem. The room has a sliding door, and it was open when I arrived.
Looking in through the door, the Printing Preparation Room seemed narrow but deep. Directly opposite the door was a window with its curtains drawn back, and a large table was enthroned in the middle of the room. The table’s surface was clean, only containing the white plate that used to hold the fried bread.
Cardboard boxes and bookshelves were lined along the wall, with sheets of paper spilling from them as well. Looking in from the door, I could see some tables that are normally found in classrooms, one by the right wall, one by the left wall and one next to the window straight ahead. Each of these tables had a chair placed nearby, except for the table by the window. I noticed some paper and photographs scattered on each of these tables.
There was a whiteboard placed by the right wall, and written on it was what looked like an outline for the December issue. The subtitle “Berliners from Germany” under the headline “New Year Celebrations Around the World” must be referring to this problematic agepan game in question. Sitting next to the left wall was something I’d been curious about from just now, a refridgerator. Noticing my gaze, Kengo asked.
“Oh, you curious about the fridge?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Even I don’t know why it’s here. It’s not even plugged in.”
Since the school wouldn’t pay the electrical fees for a refridgerator that only the Newspaper Club would use, there was no mystery as to why it wasn’t plugged in. The weird thing was why it was even placed there in the first place… though I wouldn’t imagine that it was related to the agepan mystery.
Now that I’d roughly examined the room, I questioned Kengo again.
“Could you tell me the shape and size of the agepan?”
Kengo formed a circle with his thumbs and index fingers that was a size bigger than a 500-yen coin.
“It was about this big, and it was spherical in shape. It was brown and had some white powder on it.”
“That wasn’t just some white powder, it was granulated sugar.”
“That’s what I thought, but I was told to answer only what I know to be undoubtedly true.”
I was impressed by his conscientiousness. But that aside…
“Didn’t you say it was as big as a fist earlier? What you described seems quite small in comparison.”
The ring produced by Kengo’s fingers was about the size of a mini castella sold at festival stalls.
“Ah, they’re usually much bigger. The store we interviewed said that they were trying to make a small size of agepan for kids, so we asked them to let us have some. Since we would be able to see the mustard if we were eating the normal-sized ones, it was really convenient that we got some that can be eaten in one bite… and it saves on costs.”
“Meaning… that the agepan you used for your game isn’t being sold.”
“Exactly.”
It would probably be difficult for someone to disguise as a customer and buy equally-sized agepan.
“Was there a variety of flavors? Like chocolate, or orange?”
“…I dunno. They were just samples, so they might be test products by the bakery. I can’t say for sure. They all looked the same to me.”
“Did you notice anything else?”
“There was a small hole under the agepan, or the other side of the white powder. Mind if I make a guess?”
“Go ahead.”
“That’s the hole where they put in the jam. I think the mustard was added from that hole as well.”
“I see, that certainly sounds like it.”
Monchi muttered, “Did you really have to be so careful?” Well, while he was usually too careless, Kengo rigorously distinguishing the facts from his speculation was extremely encouraging.
That should do it for the agepan itself. On to the next topic.
“The tasting was done just now, right?”
“Yeah, a bit after 4:30, I think.”
“You already told me that the four of you tried the bread, but was there anyone else at that time?”
“At the moment we ate the agepan, huh? If so, it was definitely just the four of us.”
His phrasing was a little curious.
“You mean there were other people at different times?”
“Yeah. The one who brought the agepan was Seba-senpai, a second-year.”
“And that person…”
“He immediately left. No, sorry, I didn’t see him. He should have immediately left. He’s in a band, and they have a live performance today. He’s the vocalist, I think.”
“Wow…”
I’d thought that this school didn’t have many oddballs, but being in the Newspaper Club and the vocalist of a band at the same time was certainly interesting. I wanted to know what direction the band went in, but refrained from asking as it was probably not related to the agepan mystery.
“So no one else other than this Seba-senpai entered the room?”
Kengo started to nod, but instead spoke in an annoyed manner.
“At the very least, I didn’t see anyone. What about the rest of you?”
The other three students gave the same response.
Now I roughly understood the basics of this situation. I knew what I wanted to say next, but I was hesitant to do so in front of the suspects.
“Kengo, let’s talk in the hallway.”
“…Alright.”
I walked out of the room while feeling the cold stares of the other three people, with Kengo following behind. The autumn sun was beginning to set, and the sky outside the window was red. I could hear the high-pitched clangs of a baseball bat hitting a ball ringing out from the athletic grounds.
“So?”
Kengo asked a short question, so I gave a straightforward reply.
“Does anyone have a motive?”
I wouldn’t be able to determine someone to be the culprit just because they had or didn’t have a motive, but it was still something I had to ask. Some beneficial information could possibly fall out of this, after all. Kengo frowned.
“That’s hard.”
“You can make an educated guess here.”
“Of course. I can’t talk about others’ internal feelings as fact.”
Crossing his arms, Kengo groaned.
“To be honest, I can’t think of anyone having a motive. That’s why everyone’s feeling so uncomfortable.”
“The person who takes the hit has to write the article. Could it be that they didn’t want to do it?”
“It’s not like you don’t have to write anything if you don’t take the hit. It’s just that the person would be assigned to the agepan article, while everyone else gets assigned to other articles.”
“What if someone really didn’t want to write about agepan…”
I made a shot in the dark, but Kengo shook his head.
“No one was forced to participate. Seba-senpai refused, saying that he can’t take spicy food at all, and the president is writing the main article, so he didn’t join us. There’s another first-year club member, but they didn’t participate.”
“For second-year students, there’s only Seba-senpai and the club president?”
“Yeah.”
So there were five first-year students and two second-year students. I didn’t know if I should think of them as a club with an unbalanced composition of students, or as a club that was easy to enter but quickly made you want to quit.
“What was the other first-year student’s reason for not participating?”
“That guy’s called Iida, and he’s a semi-ghost member who may not even appear once a week. It would be awkward if he happens to show up while we’re eating the agepan by ourselves, so we did tell him beforehand that we would be researching this topic, and asked if he wanted to join us.”
“It wouldn’t be strange if he refused without giving a reason why.”
“Yeah. All he said was, ‘I’ll pass.’”
“The person who directly communicated with him was you, right?”
“We’re in the same class. I also talked to him after classes ended today, but he said he couldn’t go to club today because he had to attend cram school. I walked with him to the entranceway and saw him off.”
Indeed, if this activity was voluntary, it wouldn’t make sense for the person who got the mustard-filled bread to not self-declare. Could they have assumed without any basis that they wouldn’t get the winning agepan, and when they did, decided to feign ignorance in a state of panic? That didn’t seem very likely.
There was another thing I needed to ask Kengo about.
“So, why did you ask me for help?”
He put on a puzzled look.
“What do you mean, why? I just wanted to know who took the hit.”
He then added a line that didn’t need to be said.
“I was also grasping at straws there.”
I’d had no intention of assuring him that he was in good hands, but that was quite the unexpected line.
“I was wondering if you had any reason for wanting to find the culprit that you would grasp at straws for it. It’s meaningless to say this at this point, but even if the culprit isn’t revealed, you all could simply play rock paper scissors to decide who writes the article.”
I would be a little dissatisfied if they really decided it with a game of rock paper scissors, but that was certainly a way to solve their predicament.
Kengo made a sour face.
“You sure hit where it hurts.”
He spat out.
“I didn’t plan to say this, but…”
“There’s something going on, right?”
“Don’t tell this to anyone.”
Naturally.
With a short sigh, Kengo folded his arms.
“This project was suggested by Makishima. She was the one who noticed that a German bakery recently opened near the school, found out that they sell these Berliner Pfannkuchen and learned that Germans play a game with them at the end of the year. She brought it up and asked if it would be a good idea to write an article about it. The project went through, but Makishima actually isn’t getting along well with Monchi. I don’t know what happened, but they’re in a cold war with each other, and Makishima probably thinks that Monchi is keeping quiet about him taking the hit just to destroy her plans. Monchi also doesn’t appreciate being suspected, and if they actually lock horns, Sugi will likely side with Makishima. If we don’t find the culprit now, the Newspaper Club could break up. This problem is a lot more serious than it looks.”
My eyes opened wide in amazement.
“Kengo… you’re actually quite thoughtful, huh.”
“Oi, what did you think of me before?”
They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but I honestly couldn’t imagine the rugged Kengo to be so considerate. Perhaps I should reflect a little on my misjudgment.
Finally, I asked one last question.
“Let me confirm with you again, just in case. The agepan you ate was not the lucky one, right?”
Kengo’s eyes opened wide for an instance, but he immediately composed himself and answered.
“Yeah, it wasn’t the lucky one.”
Taking whatever Kengo said to be true was one of the premises I’d raised earlier. By following this premise, no matter how complicated the situation becomes later, I could be certain that Kengo did not eat the lucky agepan.
Three suspects remained.
When we returned to the room, the other three were still surrounding the big table while sitting on folding chairs, as before. There was one more chair in the room, but it would be weird for me or Kengo to sit down, so we continued standing. Ignoring the piercing stares, I put on an especially brave face.
“I heard from Kengo. There are only two second-year students in the Newspaper Club, and there is another first-year student.”
I’d actually heard more than that, but of course, I kept quiet about it. Observing them again, Makishima-san and Monchi-kun were indeed not looking at each other, while Sugi-san was looking nervously at their facial expressions.
Makishima-san spoke in a manner that seemed to say, “How ridiculous.”
“You won’t figure out anything by hearing about that. All I want to know is who took the hit.”
“I can’t say anything about the ‘culprit’ yet.”
She snorted. I didn’t feel frustrated by that, but continued.
“But I’ve gotten a good assessment of the situation. I can come up with three broad reasons as to why the culprit did not come forward.”
“Three?”
I raised my index finger.
“First, the agepan contained no mustard in the first place. That is why no one took the hit.”
“But that’s…!”
Turning a deaf ear to Makishima-san’s words of protest, I put up my middle finger.
“Second, there was mustard in the agepan, but the person who ate it did not notice.”
Sugi-san tilted her head.
“But everyone tasted it properly…?”
Looking at everyone surrounding the big table, I raised my ring finger.
“Third, someone here took the hit, but didn’t want to say that they did. They had a reason to hide that fact.”
“A reason to hide?”
The one who reacted sensitively was Monchi-kun.
“Why don’t you tell us what you have in mind, then?”
“I don’t know, but for example… the culprit is extremely superstitious, and couldn’t accept that they got the mustard-filled bread?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I can’t speak of others’ inner thoughts as fact.”
I copied Kengo’s words from earlier, causing Monchi-kun to withdraw while muttering something incomprehensible, and Kengo to look sour.
Looking at my hand that had three fingers held up, I thought of one remaining possibility that could definitely be considered, so I raised a fourth finger.
“Another possibility is that the culprit is from outside the club.”
Kengo instantly responded.
“That can’t be. There were only the four of us, and there were four agepan. An outsider couldn’t have done anything… you can’t be saying that they swapped the mustard-filled agepan with a normal one, right? As I mentioned earlier, it isn’t sold anywhere else.”
Monchi-kun clicked his tongue.
“I was here the entire time writing an article. I didn’t even go to the toilet. If someone came in, I would’ve noticed.”
“By here, do you mean this very seat?”
Monchi-kun who was sitting while facing the big table irritably shook his hands and pointed towards the window. As I’d taken note of earlier, there was a table near the window, but no chair.
“I was in that seat. There’s no way I wouldn’t notice anyone going in or out.”
“I can’t see any chairs, though.”
Sugi-san cut in timidly.
“Makishima-san and I are currently using them.”
Kengo continued with a declaration.
“Monchi was indeed there writing an article when I arrived.”
I wasn’t doubtful of that statement, but I tried checking his memory.
“Was Monchi-kun facing the room, or was he facing the window?”
“Neither. His side was facing the window. He looked at me immediately when I entered.”
He answered without hesitation. Following that, Makishima-san raised her voice.
“Going by common sense, even if an outsider came in, they wouldn’t just quietly eat something on the table.”
Going by common sense, we wouldn’t have this situation where no one knows who ate the mustard-filled agepan… I wanted to retort, but she had a point. Even Osanai-san wouldn’t pinch a snack lying in some other club room without permission.
“So there were only four agepan, and on top of the fact that the entrance to this room was being monitored, no one would eat another club’s food at their own discretion, huh. It’s already in tatters, but if you have any other proof to reject the outsider theory, I’m all ears.”
Kengo meticulously pondered for a moment, then asserted.
“No, it’s just these three reasons. Is that not enough?”
“Of course not. I withdraw the theory that someone from outside the club did it.”
I placed my hands on the large table.
“As expected, that would mean someone here got the lucky agepan. We’ll leave figuring out their motive for later, and for now we’ll set the record straight on the mustard.”
“You mean the possibilities that there was no mustard, or that someone didn’t notice the mustard?”
Kengo muttered dubiously.
“Can’t we just declare the former to be impossible? And the latter isn’t unreasonable, right?”
“Surprisingly, mustard doesn’t have a very strong taste. The culprit could have gotten the wrong idea and believed that the agepan simply tasted like that. Was the mustard inserted in the shop?”
Sugi-san answered my question.
“Ah, no, I think Hencho-san had it put into the agepan at the Home Economics Club.”
“Hencho? Is that a family name?”
“Umm, no, I mean the editor-in-chief2, Seba-senpai.”
So Seba-senpai, the vocalist, was also the editor-in-chief, huh. It was quite interesting that the club president and editor-in-chief were two separate people. While contemplating the personnel administration of the Newspaper Club, I asked.
“Basically, it wasn’t that mustard was put in place of jam, but mustard was added to the jam, right?”
Sugi-san nodded. Would that taste weird, I wonder…
“I’ll need to check with the Home Economics Club, then. Also, does this plate belong to the Newspaper Club?”
Kengo tilted his head.
“No. Just a guess, but I think it’s probably borrowed from the Home Economics Club.”
“I’ll also ask about that. For the time being, how about writing your thoughts about how the agepan tasted? Each of you should jot down what you thought the agepan tasted like without showing it to anyone else. We’ll compare them later, and if someone’s impression is clearly similar to mustard, we can think that they took the hit without knowing it.”
Makishima-san turned away and fiddled with her hair.
“Let’s go with that, then.”
The fact that she accepted my suggestion so readily meant that she probably thought highly of it.
“Kengo, the Home Economics Club’s room is the Home Economics Classroom, right?”
“Yeah. You’ll be going?”
“I’ll have nothing to do while everyone is writing about the taste, anyway. I’ll be back.”
“Thanks, I’ll leave it to you.”
With that, Kengo lowered his head, just a little.
The Berlin Fried Bread Mystery (Part 1) | Contents | The Berlin Fried Bread Mystery (Part 3)
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Editors (Tier 2): Suleman, Dedavond, Egi Pratama, Pearl H Nettle
Assistants (Tier 1) : Rolando Sanchez
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- The title of this story kept changing because I didn’t know it was referring to a description rather than the name of the bread. On a slightly related note, Pfannkuchen is a misnomer because it literally means “pancake”, but people from Berlin decided to call it that for some reason. A more accurate term used by other German speaking people is Berliner Bollen, which was previously in the title of this story. An agepan is atype of deep-fried bread, often coated with sugar, cinnamon, or kinako (soybean flour).
- Editor-in-chief in Japanese is 編集長, or henshuuchou.