A Corpse by Evening

A Corpse by Evening (夕べには骸に) is the manga written by Haruna Anjou and illustrated by Muneyoshi Kugayama. It was introduced in episode. It was mentioned when Mayaka Ibara got into a fight with Ayako Kouchi.

Beginning
Episode 17 of Hyouka introduces the Juumonji Incident to solve for the Classic Lit Club during the Kanya Festival at their school.

The start of episode 12 takes place at Houtarou Oreki's home, where his sister happens to be home. Before Houtarou takes off for school, Houtarou's sister gives Houtarou a broken pen for good luck, and Houtarou heads off for school.

Once at school, the Classic Lit Club prepares for the Kanya Festival by being briefed from another Classic Lit Club member Eru Chitanda that she mistakenly ordered 200 "Hyouka" Anthology copies. Leaving the Classic Lit Club with the responsibility to sell 200 copies before the 3 day festival ends.

Soon after the briefing, Oreki proclaims he will remain in the room in case customers wander in the Classic Lit Club on the top floor. While the other members of the Classic Lit Club put their independent plans into action to sell some anthology copies. It is when Oreki is holding down the fort that he notices staring out the window that something had been stolen from the a cappella Club. Initially, the stolen item was an apple juice carton, which left Oreki disinterested and proceeded to carry out guarding the anthology copies. However, the a cappella Club is not the last victim and a series of thefts on campus begins. Eventually reaching Chitanda and soon after Oreki himself.

The Classic Lit Club are provided with another mystery to solve. The Classic Lit Club takes the challenge to find Juumonji thief, but also needs to sell the 200 anthology copies. Thus, episodes 12 through 17 become imperative to the Juumonji Incident.

The Pen's Significance
Oreki is given a pen from his sister in the beginning, but really the significance of the pen is that it leads to a series of trades between Oreki and people who wander into the Classic Lit Club room on the top floor.


 * 1st trade - The broken pen is traded for club concert back stage pass.
 * 2nd trade - Oreki removes the bobby pin on the back of the back stage pass to hand to a gardening club member to zip his fly. In return the gardening club member gives Oreki a water pistol in the form of a glok-17.
 * 3rd trade - Oreki trades the water pistol for flour with two girls with pumpkin heads.
 * 4th trade - The flour is traded for a small mirror from Mayaka Ibara.
 * 5th trade - The mirror is traded for the manga "A Corpse By Evening" from Oreki's sister.

All the trinkets used for trade did the following in possession of Oreki. The Classic Lit Club had involved itself in a cooking competition in accordance to Satoshi Fukube taking a challenge from a classmate. Once the cooking competition began, all looked prosperous until the end when Mayaka Ibara ran out of ingredients to cook a dish. Oreki yelled from his post and attracted the attention of Satoshi Fukube, which Oreki proceeded to drop down a bag flour to be used in the competition.The flour aided in the Classic Lit Club member Mayaka Ibara's shortage of ingredients and she successfully created the last food dish to win for her team.

Where was "A Corpse By Evening"?
Unfortunately, Ibara never found her copy of the manga, and "A Corpse By Evening" was brought on campus from a different source. After the cooking competition ended, Mayaka Ibara was reminded by Oreki of fair trade for the flour. Mayaka Ibara agreed with Oreki and granted him a small mirror. Soon after, Oreki's sister stopped by the Classic Lit Club for a visit where Oreki was left to guard and sell the left over anthologies. After a short conversation regarding the series of lucky trades with her broken pen, Oreki's sister traded the manga "A Corpse By Evening" for the small mirror and left the club room.

Significance of the manga
As Houtarou read "A Corpse By Evening" manga, he noticed one interesting thing. In manga afterword, it was mentioned that manga will have sequel, called "The Kudryavka Sequence", to be released on next year's Kanya Festival. However, Houtarou found out, that there is no such manga sold on the festival. He hypothesized that lack of this manga is somehow connected with the Juumonji Incident.

Although it is unknown to whether Oreki unveiled the Juumonji thief to his fellow club members, Oreki did uncover the culprit. Oreki deducted that the Juumoji thief stole items in (traditional system ordering kana by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order), which was also deduced by most characters in the anime.

Initially, other students considered the skipped character to be a result of their being too many students present within a certain club and the thief too afraid to steal something with a large amount of people present. Oreki deduced Juumonji skipping Ku to be intentional, as it intended the recipient of the coded message that credit gets lost where it is do. Entitling the intended message to be "Ku has already forfeited his Kudryavka Sequence"(Oreki ep. 17).

Juumoji uses the same method to orchestrate his thefts to outlay a message to the only person remaining in connection to the manga's creation. Oreki determines that the kudryavka sequence had been illustrated in the Kanya Festival pamphlet titled "Getting Around at Kanya Festival" given to all the students. The only people with the authority over the pamphlets printing are the 20 student council members of the school. Leaving one of the 20 student council members to be the culprit.

Through analysis of the manga's cover itself, Oreki deduced the name Ajimu Takuha listed on the cover to be mesh of 3 people. The 3 people being the creators of the manga. With the mesh alias on the cover, Oreki deduced the name Ajimu Takuha to be a mesh of 3 people's initials.

In Japanese writing the name is in the form of 6 characters total. Taking each set of initials in the words lead to the initials of the people responsible for manga's creation.

The first initials as Ha and A giving Haruna Anjo("A Corpse By Evening" : Author) and known to be the manga's author in accordance to Mayaka Ibara's findings.

The second set being Munuyoshi Kuguyama fitting with characters Mu and Ku("A Corpse By Evening" : Artist) and also the last named victim listed in the kudryavka sequence in the public student Kanya Festival pamphlet.

Finally leaving the Japanese characters Ji and Ta. In addition, the culprit also must be a second year student or higher based on the manga's memory from "last year" according to Mayaka Ibara. Leaving the student council member and known to draw manga artist that fits with Ji and Ta initials. Therefore, Oreki deciphered the culprit to be Jiro Tanabe("A Corpse By Evening" : Background Artist).