Debut, Wen Yao Girls! - Chapter 1

First Performance

The warm lights of the makeup mirror backstage cast a golden glow on Edogawa Ranpo’s hair.

She pinched the silver thread on the collar of her stage outfit with her fingertips. In the mirror, the girl’s eyes shone like sparkling starlight. The deafening cheers from the audience mixed with the director’s countdown in her earpiece: “Trainee Edogawa Ranpo, three minutes to the waiting area.”

“Today, I’m going to be the most dazzling star on the stage.” She curved her lips at the mirror, her voice as light as a butterfly landing on a piano string.

Her fingertips unconsciously rubbed the badge below her collar—the emblem of the Idol Resonance Project, which gleamed with a cool, white light.

The reflection in the mirror blurred.

A six-year-old Ranpo was squatting on the carpet in the study, a yellowed copy of The D-Slope Murder Case open on her lap. The cicadas outside made the summer feel long.

The lights in her parents’ laboratory were always on. She had counted: from seven to ten o’clock, thirty-two footsteps passed the study door, but not once did they stop.

“Logic doesn’t lie.” Little Ranpo put a bookmark on the page that said “the culprit is the landlady.” She propped her chin on her knuckles. “As long as you’re fast enough and accurate enough, you can catch all the truth.”

“Ranpo-san?”

A sweet female voice cut the memory short.

Ranpo turned her head and saw Sakurajima Makoto standing behind her, holding a thermos. The hairspray on her strands reflected light like a small pearl.

Makoto pinched the handle of the thermos with her fingertips, her knuckles white, a sign she had been holding it for a long time. “I… I saw you drinking a lot of water during rehearsal. This is warm…”

Ranpo stared at the goji berry and red date tea. Her throat bobbed.

Since she was little, besides canned coffee from vending machines, this was the first cup of warm water someone had specifically given her.

As she reached out to take it, her fingertips brushed against Sakurajima’s cool hand. Makoto pulled her hand back as if she had been burned, and her ears instantly turned red. “You… your stage design is really amazing! The spinning step with the ‘Ultra-Deduction’ light and shadow effects…”

“Thank you.” Ranpo took a sip of the tea. It was so sweet it made her tongue tingle.

She looked at Sakurajima’s sparkling eyes and remembered how this girl, who was always assigned to the back, had secretly practiced until the early hours of the morning last week.

“One minute!” a stage manager shouted backstage into a walkie-talkie.

Ranpo handed the thermos back. As she turned, she heard Sakurajima whisper, “I’ll cheer for you.” Her steps paused, but she only nodded, her ponytail brushing against the wrinkled corner of the other girl’s performance outfit.

The air pressure in the waiting area dropped by three degrees.

Ranpo, wearing her studded dance shoes, turned around. Her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of a group of trainees huddled behind the curtain. Shiraishi Yuna, the one in the middle, was touching up her makeup with a powder compact. Her cold, sneering reflection appeared in the mirror. “She’s just being clever to get attention. Does she really think the audience can’t see it’s all for show?”

Ranpo’s nails gently dug into her palm.

She had heard of Shiraishi’s “Heart Reading” ability, which allowed her to read other people’s emotions through their micro-expressions. The angle of Shiraishi’s eyes now was exactly the same as when a trainee was eliminated last week.

“Motive…” She lowered her gaze to the tip of her shoe. “She needs to create a buzz to maintain her ranking, and my stage is getting too much attention.”

“Edogawa Ranpo, get ready!”

The moment the spotlight hit her, Ranpo heard her heart pounding like a drum.

She leaped to the beat. Her silver skirt bloomed into a half-moon. The choreographer’s instructions came through her earpiece: “Be careful with the sliding step in the second section. Maintain your distance from the backup dancers—”

“Snap!”

The sound of tearing metal drowned out the music.

Ranpo’s pupils contracted. A glance showed her the light stand on her left swaying. A twenty-kilogram LED light panel was falling at a free-fall speed, aiming right for her head!

“Watch out—” screams erupted from the audience.

Ranpo instinctively lunged to the side. Her hair brushed the edge of the light panel, and her knee hit the ground, a stinging pain shooting through it.

The director immediately cut the live broadcast signal. Backstage, a chaos ensued. A stage manager rushed onto the stage with an emergency light. The cameraman’s lens was still shaking, revealing the hanging wire of the light stand. The insulation had been cleanly sliced, and the copper wire ends gleamed with a new metallic sheen.

“Quiet.”

Ranpo supported herself and stood up on one knee. Her hair tie was half undone, but she was smiling like a cat that had found its prey.

She closed her eyes for 0.1 seconds. All the details flashed back in her mind: the bolts of the light stand were not rusted, the wire was cut at a 45-degree angle, and it matched the Swiss Army knife Shiraishi had tucked into her waistband yesterday during practice.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” She grabbed the microphone that had fallen at her feet, her voice louder than usual. “How about we consider this little incident a ‘deduction game’ between me and the stage?” As she spoke, she gave a nod to the backup dancers. The original formation was instantly changed to a circle. “For the rest of the dance, I need everyone to help me find the ‘culprit’—after each section, why don’t you guess who did it?”

The audience was silent for a moment, then erupted into even more passionate cheers.

The backup dancers were stunned for two seconds, then immediately followed her adjusted rhythm.

Ranpo spun on the stage, which still trembled from the falling light stand. Her hair brushed past a girl in the front row holding a fan sign. The girl’s eyes shone like ignited stars.

“Real-time stage resonance update—Edogawa Ranpo, currently ranked third!”

At the judges’ table, Fujiwara Yuma took off his black-rimmed glasses and propped his chin on his knuckles.

The former ace of a national idol group was known for his precise facial expressions, but now his eyes narrowed behind his lenses. When the light stand fell, Ranpo’s trajectory to the side perfectly avoided any possible secondary injuries. That wasn’t an instinctual reaction; it was a calculated escape route.

“Next trainee, get ready.”

As she bowed, the back of Ranpo’s performance outfit was soaked in cold sweat, but she still stood straight and bowed to the audience.

As she left the stage, the stage managers moved the light stand. She glimpsed a faint scratch on the inner side of the metal stand—it perfectly matched the way Shiraishi held her knife with her left hand.

“Edogawa-san, stay behind.” Fujiwara’s voice came from the judges’ table.

Ranpo turned. The black trousers folded into a clean line at her knee.

As she walked toward the mentor’s table, her peripheral vision caught a girl in a beige shirt leaning against the wall in a corner backstage. Her hair fell to her collarbone, and she was smiling at Ranpo with her head tilted.

Her eyes were light brown, like melted caramel. Bandages were wrapped around her wrist, a flash of white in the shadows.

“Is that…” Ranpo’s steps faltered slightly.

“What are you spacing out for?” Fujiwara tapped the table. His tone was as sharp as ever, but there was a hint of interest in his eyes. “Follow me to the office.”

The backstage wind blew in, ruffling the stray hairs on Ranpo’s forehead.

As she followed Fujiwara down the hallway, she heard faint footsteps behind her and a subtle, soft laugh, like a feather lightly brushing against her heart.

“You knew there was something wrong with the equipment all along?”

Fujiwara’s voice sounded the moment he opened the office door.

Ranpo stood at the entrance, looking at his shadow on the door frame. She remembered an unsolved logic problem from her childhood. This time, she decided to ask a question first.

“Sir.” She lifted her chin, her eyes shining brighter than the stage lights. “What if I told you I not only knew, but also had a backup plan?”

The window at the end of the hallway let in the twilight, stretching their shadows long.

In the distance, the sound of staff packing up the stage could be heard, along with a trainee’s shriek: “Shiraishi-senpai’s Swiss Army knife is missing!”

In a hidden corner, Dazai Osamu took out the bandages from her pocket and slowly re-wrapped her wrist.

She watched Ranpo disappear into the office, her smile deepening. Her fingertips gently touched her earpiece—just before the broadcast was cut, she clearly heard a hint of excitement in Ranpo’s voice when she said, “find the culprit.”

“How interesting,” she murmured to the air, turning and walking toward the practice room. Her heels clicked on the floor. “I’ll be sure to participate in this game.”