Introduction to Volume 1: To ask for advice on behalf of a friend who's been entangled in a paranormal incident on campus, Haruka visits the "Film Appreciation Society," where it's said a man with mysterious powers resides. However, the person she meets there is a pretentious young man with tousled hair and drowsy eyes. Haruka boldly asks him for advice, but what happens next? A college girl's isolation and murder, a murder disguised as a suicide... the mysterious incidents are tackled one-by-on...
Having read this whole 上 volume of a Yakumo book, I can now confidently assert that there is absolutely no reason for a Yakumo book to ever be so long that it is split into 上・下 volumes.
The beginning 25% of books in this series tend to be slower than the conclusions, which usually have all the exciting parts, and since this is half a book, that meant that it was slow for... most of the book. The side characters also felt, somehow, even dumber than they normally are, so it was a bit painful to follow their investigations at times. I could think of several ways that the criminal had done the crime and reading endless chapters of 'there's just no way the criminal could have done this crime' got a bit old.
Luckily, things started to pick up in the last couple of chapters, so I'm assuming that the 下 volume will have all the good stuff in it.