#i don't want to look at everything through eden culprit glasses so i'm very open to alternate interpretations

[venus-is-thinking]

A Note on Eden's Note

Okay, so I was looking at the note that Eden hypothetically wrote to Arei about Arturo blackmailing her. To be honest, I haven't actually sat down and read it for a while. So, now that we know it's Arturo and the torn parts are using he/him, this is what the note reads:

TW: SUICIDE

Arei Someone else found out my motive. That he was responsibel for the death of his sister. I didn't mean to share it. I said I wouldn't but it slipped out I'm scared. I think he might do something to me please meet me in playground at 7:30 you promised to be my friend I need you now more than ever -Eden

People have pointed out the spelling of responsible before. There's also, like, no punctuation before line breaks and the capitalization is janky. What I want to look at, though, is that first bit.

Someone else found out my motive. Who the hell is that?

Shortly after the note is revealed, this exchange happens.

Okay, so, crisis averted. Eden said that she didn't share her motive with anyone, which I have to assume is in reference to the "it slipped out" bit.

The weird thing to me is that it's included in the note in the first place. Assume you're the killer and you're writing this note. You have to get Arei to get to the playground at 7:30, signed Eden. You know that Arturo is threatening Eden, and you know that his secret is that his younger sister committed suicide because of him. Why wouldn't you just say you were worried about Arturo in general? Why invent this other person who learned about Arturo's secret?

'Cause, it just complicates it, right? It adds another layer of disbelief. On top of Eden, Arei and Arturo, you're adding another person into the mix: someone who learned about Arturo's secret on accident. Add that in to Teruko knowing Eden's secret holder uses he/him pronouns and the possibility of someone impersonating Eden to write the note, and you're looking at, like, half the remaining students potentially knowing about Arturo's secret in some way, shape or form.

But no one except Eden and Arturo seem to want to indicate that they know about it. The person who wrote the note would have to know that too, right?

If anyone has any thoughts on why this hypothetical person would exist, even if it's a complete and total lie, I'd love to hear it. The best theory I can come up with is that the author of the note would have to be Eden or Arturo (for both of them, the more people who know about the exchange with Eden, Arturo and Arei, the less suspicious they are individually), but I'm interested in alternate interpretations.

...Also, I just want to say that the fact that the note is censored is incredibly suspicious. Like, the parts that are missing from the note feel big enough that they're intentional. That, to me, says that whoever threw the note away fully intended on it being discovered in the trial. Why tear the note to shreds and throw most of the shreds away, but not ones that include key information about who you're talking about? Preserving the secrecy of individual pieces of the note means that you expect someone to piece together the fragments.