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The Mercator-Style Investigation Method (Maya Yutaka)

From the anthology 'Mercator's Hunt for the Wicked'

The Mercator-Style Investigation Method

Yutaka Maya

1

For some strange reason, Ayu Mercator of all people had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Somehow, I had the impression that he was an otherworldly human who was completely removed from hospitals, so — speaking more bluntly — I thought he was a man who wouldn’t die even if you killed him so, in any case, I was shocked.

The heatwave began in the last third of July, this year. He was always wearing a full tuxedo, so I figured he might have collapsed from heat stroke. Certainly, he was as likely to get ill as the devil himself contracting heat stroke.

I’d only received the news after three days had passed, however he’d only been hospitalised for two days so he’d already been discharged. Right now, he was back in the detective office, as usual.

Bananas in hand as a get-well-soon gift, I went to the Mercator office with its haughty signboard hung up, and he cheerfully came out to greet me. He had a somewhat sickly pallor. He was naturally fair-skinned, but right now he’d become as pale as a mannequin in a shop window; his vitality was fading.

For a start, the precise moment he came out to cheerfully greet me without hurling any abuse at me, he was a far cry from the original Merc. ‘Are you okay?’ I unconsciously worried.

Merc read my mind.

“It’s pointless to worry. Too bad for you who was expecting a detective on the verge of death, but I’m not so weak as to demand pity. And, obviously, I don’t have heat stroke.”

He sat down on the leather sofa and, finally, he began spitting sarcasm. The tuxedo-clad Merc skilfully spun his top hat around and around on his index finger. He was probably intending to emphasise that everything was normal, but his domineering voice was somehow lacking its usual haughtiness and bite. Or else, was that just my usual preconceptions?

“Well then, what was the cause?”

The answer to my question was that it seemed like he was in poor shape due to overwork. The results of the doctors’ examination had found nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, but he should rest up for a while.

“These last two months, I’ve been buried in five incredibly dull cases. I curse my excessive work.”

Of those five, I’d accompanied him for three of them, and of the remaining two I’d only heard him talk of one. It was nothing but cases that were too dull for the effort they took — they weren’t even fit as material for a short story.

“In that case, shouldn’t you hurry home and rest rather than sticking around in this place? Or has the final case still not been resolved?”

“This place is such a hideous turn of phrase. Across all time and place, a private detective’s castle is second to none. ...Well, I just finished up the final case on the phone just a short while ago, so I’m completely free.”

Was Mercator that kind of workaholic? I unconsciously harboured my doubts, but thinking about it I feel like his past times, both hobbies and practical, were all completely covered by his detective work. Let’s not talk about his greed.

“However, though you could say that I’m on break, a villa with a locked room would make up for this past year.”

“Cut that out.”

I immediately rejected it. He couldn’t rest in a villa with a locked room. Who knows when a body would turn up.

Merc brought up two or three places he owned where he could rest, but all of them were stigmatised property where a murder had occurred. He only bought ominous property that he liked from cases that he was involved in, so none of them were acceptable candidates.

“Come to think of it, didn’t you receive an invitation from Kamioka-san?”

Kamioka was the client in a case Merc had gotten involved in last year. It had been a simple request to search for an industry spy within the IT company he ran in Nagoya, but the instant Merc arrived — the reward was high since it was a matter of proprietary information — a locked-room murder occurred so it was an exceptionally flavourful case for him.

That Shoutarou Kamioka had contacted us last month, inviting us to his villa in Norikura Highlands as a holiday home in the summer. It seemed his friends would also be gathering there.

Merc received a lot of invitations like this, less out of gratitude and more out of an element of spectacle. Detectives are novel beings and they make for a good appetiser at the reception, though not to the level of a famous entertainer or athlete. Of course, however, Merc was aware of his partner’s intentions and he gave his decision in his usual fashion.

“The Norikura Highlands? Certainly, I suppose I could relax there…”

Merc’s response wasn’t too dissatisfied so I promptly called Kamioka to ask whether we could stay for about half a month, to which he gave an enthusiastic reply.

If you ask me, Kamioka takes vacations just like the Westerners do; it seems he spends a full month in his holiday home every summer. If it’s during that time, it doesn’t matter how long we stay there.

That being the case, once we’d informed him we were coming, we had no choice but to accept the invitation. Of course I’d be travelling with Merc. I let out a sigh of relief.

If Merc had decided to stay in a first-class summer getaway resort, I wouldn’t have the funds and such to go and would be forced to stay behind in the red-hot hell of Osaka. As effective as the aircon is, I’d have no choice but to spend the whole time in the one-room apartment I rent, staring at my computer.

Sometime later, we were on our way to the Norikura Highlands with my laptop riding on the backseat of the car. We departed in the morning but by the time we’d arrived at the villa in the Norikura Highlands — taking the Komaki and Matsumoto expressways — it was already past three. As expected, it wasn’t a place you could casually head to by car from Osaka.

Kamioka was from Nagoya, however, so he just had to travel north on the Chuuou expressway. But, given that I think we passed by Nagoya before noon, it should still take almost half a day even from Nagoya. It was a troublesome distance to go back and forth across frequently, but I feel that if you were going to be staying there for a month, if anything it’s a short distance. Kamioka’s villa was a short hike up from the heart of the Norikura Highlands in a spot with a beautiful view. It was in a slightly-sparse sector developed by a major real estate of about a dozen or so holiday homes huddled together in the empty space. It seemed that each holiday home’s bath had a hot spring attached to it.

Though the contrast between the endless blue sky and the vivid greenery of the highlands’ scenery was soothing, it all looked near exactly alike and so it would be easy to get lost. In fact, I was so focused on the scenery that I’d made a wrong turn while driving and wasted another thirty minutes as a result. After that, I took great pains to focus my attention on the car’s navigation system and not the precious scenery. As indicated by the dull car navigation system, we turned down numerous streets lined by tidy rows of trees and, before long, we arrived at the stylish gatepost’s of the villa we were heading to.

It was a Western-style cottage of piled dark-brown bricks with a red-tinged tile roof set on top of them. The entryway and window frames alone were white. It was three stories high with the gable roof set over the second story and with intersecting windows protruding from the triangular roof.

Half of the first floor was a garage without partitions and, already, four cars were parked within it. The garage was spacious so there was still enough room to park my car.

They must have noticed the sound of the engine. Just as I was getting out of the car, the entrance door opened and the polo-shirt clad form of Kamioka appeared. I’d let him know when we’d gotten off the expressway, so his response was fast.

He was in his mid-thirties with a tall and slender body. He had short brown hair and the forehead above his thin eyebrows was broad. He was a handsome man with chiselled, deep features and a pair of stylish, round and yellow glasses perched on his high nose. And yet, somehow, he gave off the impression of an honest man.

“Welcome, welcome, please come on in. Mercator-san. It must have been a great hassle to come all the way from Osaka.”

Kamioka greeted Merc as if to show his appreciation.

“Indeed, so. His driving is horrendous.”

Merc unnaturally stretched out his back as he responded flatly. He’d spent the entire time lying down in the passenger seat, getting his fill of the scenery, without offering to switch with me even once. Looking up at the perfectly clear blue sky, Merc said

“This is a good place. It looks like this is a new vacation home, but did you buy it recently?”

“Four years ago. I think.”

The tone of his voice dipped, just slightly. It played on my mind but Merc ignored it without question.

The door — which resembled a bar of white chocolate — opened and as we passed through the entryway, before my very eyes, a Shinsengumi officer was standing by the shoe rack. He was wearing a light blue haori with a striped patten on the sleeves. He was carrying a half-sized Japanese sword as if he was going to strike at any moment. I unconsciously fell on my rear in shock.

“It’s just a doll. What are you making such a fuss for, you noisy man.”

Mercator let out a voice of disgust. Taking a closer look, it was definitely a mannequin. Though its clothing was definitely that of the Shinsengumi, its brown hair was not done up in a topknot but in a modern short-style cut. And, despite being frozen in the moment of drawing his sword, the the dark brown eyes of his deep and chiselled face were calm. It gave me the sense of a foreign tourist going sightseeing in Kyoto.

“My younger sis loved that sort of thing. There are several placed around the place.”

“Did your sister make the costume?”

Kamioka shook his head in response to my question.

“No, her friend Yuduki-san made it. My sister loved dressing up in Yuduki-san’s clothes… They’re being displayed today as a memento to her.”

He let slip a few words there.

From what I heard, Kamioka’s younger sister, Misuzu, passed away five years ago due to an issue with her white blood cells. She’d collapsed after half a year of battling illness, shortly before her university graduation; she was still only 23 years old. Kamioka’s parents had died when they were young and, being in charge of the business he’d set up, he’d failed to notice the poor health of the sister whom he lived with.

“Around when Misuzu was a child, we used to come up to the Norikura Highlands to play. Those times when our parents were still in good health were Misuzu’s best memories. So, after she was hospitalised, she often would say that she wanted to go to Norikura at least once more.”

He said that was why he’d bought a villa here.

“This is Misuzu.”

Kamioka pointed to a photograph adorning the wall. It was of a girl with straight black hair and a deep, chiselled face that resembled her brothers’, a radiant smile filled out her face. Though her facial features were well proportioned, I’d say she gave off the impression of being boyishly handsome, rather than beautiful. Certainly, the shinsengumi outfit would have suited her.

This wasn’t the only photo of Misuzu, in the entryway alone there were five photos of various sizes above the shoe rack and such. I figured she must have loved flowers because, in each and every one, she had been photographed with colourful flowers.

“Welcome, please come in.”

With a gentle voice, a dainty young woman wearing a floral summer dress appeared on the stairs leading from the second floor. She had the same long black hair as Misuzu did in the photo, but she had a traditionally beautiful face.

“This is my wife, Wakana.”

Kamioka introduced her. Apparently, they were newlyweds who’d just gotten married in the spring. Both of them were wearing matching wedding rings on their fingers.

Wakana was Misuzu’s friend back in university, so it seems she’d met Kamioka back while Misuzu was still alive. Though he called her Misuzu’s university buddy, it was only after her death that Kamioka invited Wakana to live with him in his home and his holiday villa.

For the Kamioka with no friends his own age he hung out with, nor any hobbies or sports he was interested in, who had devoted his entire life to his work, at the same time that he’d gathered a circle of those who also remembered his sister fondly and now you could say that his friends were all significantly younger than him.

Because they all work in Nagoya they’re all incredibly close even now; including Wakana who became Kamioka’s wife, there were six of them in total. It seems that five of them were going to be coming here today, with the remaining one scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

The living room was up the stairs on the second floor, the first floor just had the library, a storage room and a bathroom. I was able to tell why the living room was on the second floor as soon as I stepped in. Among the four walls, the two walls at the south and the west had sliding french windows and there they opened up onto the magnificent Norikura mountain range in a wide panorama. It didn’t seem like the window frame obstructed the view, the frame it used was so slender.

“It’s the view Misuzu loved.” Kamioka explained proudly.

A two-person table with two four legged chairs stood on the single terrace outside the westside french window.

So that all of the westward facing guest rooms on the second floor could look out over Norikura, they each had a small veranda jutting out of them. Meanwhile, the married couple’s master bedroom was located on the third floor in an attic room with an even better view.

I was enthralled by the picturesque Norikura scenery, but on both sides of the living room entrance stood a pair of mannequins that would make you think this you were at an aristocrat’s ball. Both of them were dressed in gaudy, rococo-style evening wear, the woman’s hoop-skirt swelled out into a dress while the man wore a coat covered in flashy embroidery with a white lace jabot and sleeves. Either of their costumes would have suited the Misuzu in the photo.

“Were these costumes also made by Yuduki-san?” I asked, squinting.

“Yes. They were made the year before last, so Misuzu never had the chance to try them on, though… Every year, when we met up, Yuduki-san would bring along two or three costumes. I arranged the mannequins and the props, and decorated them.”

“Yuduki made these costumes because her hobby is making various clothes, but since she was a runt she gave them to the stylish Misuzu to wear. Misuzu also loved the clothes made by Yuduki, so she modelled them with pleasure.” Wakana explained, as if to complement Kamioka. And then added, with a wry smile, “Misuzu had a handsome face. So it’s all costumes like you’d see in the Takarazuka Revue. As such, there wasn’t even one other article of clothes.”

She continued. It seems that Yuduki works as the housekeeper of her parents’ house. I wondered if they were a well-off family, if she could afford such clearly high-quality fabrics.

“Well, then, why didn’t she do something related to the fashion industry?”

 Mercator asked while observing the stitching of the fabric.

“She always said she couldn’t get inspiration unless she had someone that she wanted to dress up. So it was impossible for her to go pro or such. We all entered the same university, but Yuduki and Misuzu both went to the same high school and it seems that Misuzu had been her model ever since those days. They held a fashion show at their school festival among other things. Apparently, the shinsengumi outfit displayed in the entryway is a memento of those times.”

“Misuzu loved the theatre but ever since she was little her body has always been frail, so she gave up on drama as an option. So, she wanted to just wear the costumes at the very least.” Kamioka said, seeming lonely.

The living room was also decorated with many photos of Misuzu, however not a shadow of the spectre of illness could be seen from her healthy smile that showed her pearly white teeth.

In addition to the Heian-aristocrats, multiple theatrical mannequins such as a Western knight and an Imperial Chinese bureaucrat were displayed in the spacious living room.

“So, then, she’s been continuing to make clothes for Misuzu even all this time after her death.”

“Right. But, recently, she’s also started making clothes for us as well.”

She pointed at a cheerleader in the corner waving yellow pom-poms overhead.

“I was the model for that one. Yuduki heard I was in the cheer club in high school and wanted to see a photo of that.”

“The size of the dolls differs depending on the model, see. Wakanas is a little shorter, so I had to get it specially prepared.” Kamioka said, pridefully.

“It’s a sort of rehabilitation, Yuduki is also gradually starting to head in a fresh direction.”

“She truly loved Misuzu, didn’t she? ……No, all of us did, not just Yuduki-san.”

“Misuzu is at the heart of all of us.”

As Wakana said, despite her frail condition, Misuzu was no introvert and you could say that she was, with her clear leadership, the heart of the circle of friends that had gathered here. It seemed that everyone was continuing to gather here at the villa five years since her death was due to her natural virtue.

“So that’s why I think that Misuzu passed on to heaven with no regrets.”

Once Kamioka turned and silently looked out on Norikura, the door to the living room opened and a pair — one man, one woman — appeared.

The man was of average height with muscular arms, like the statue of Davids, protruding from the sleeves of his t-shirt. But, rather than being like Davids, his face was more like the simian profile of Hideyoshi Toyotomi. The other person was a short and plump woman. With short hair and a round face. She had cute chestnut eyes. As soon as Merc was caught in her field of vision, her wide eyes lit up.

“Would you happen to be the rumoured famous detective?!” She let out a high pitched squeal and ran over to Merc.

“I believe so.”

Without his mood souring, Merc took off his hat and gave a light bow.

“You’re wearing an absolutely wonderful costume, aren’t you? Could I make a copy of it, next time?”

Her eyes were more fixed on Mercator’s costume than on the man himself. As expected in the face of her vigour like she was going to immediately start taking measurements, Merc gave a strained chuckle.

“Kamioka-san should have told me before hand if this is what famous detectives look like. All he told me was that you were eccentric.”

“No, I figured I’d surprise everyone.”

For some reason, Kamioka seemed elated.

I figured, more than likely, she was Yuduki Nakayama. She wasn’t like how I’d imagined when I’d heard that previous episode, just how much had she recovered?

“For the doll collection? That’s no problem. Though it’d be better off being displayed in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum than in here. But, anyway, if you’re going to make a copy, I want the mannequin to look completely like me. Not a ready-made one that you can buy off the shelf.”

“Of course. If that’s your request… Wakana and such didn’t want the face to look like theirs.”

Kamioka broke out into a smile and nodded.

“After all, as you can imagine, it’d be creepy. Imagine accidentally bumping into it in the darkness.” Wakana said, calmly. “It’s not just me, Misuzu also refused.”

“Once, in the past, I had one made but I couldn’t help feeling it was too uncanny valley.” Kamioka gave a wry smile.

In that instance, I felt an uncanny feeling other than the uncanny valley run up my spine. This older brother, he was completely capable of making a death mask of his younger sister…

“This is probably the first time I’ve thought that I wanted to make someone’s clothes since Misuzu was no longer with us…. Will you be staying here for a while, Mercator-san?”

At the same time Yuduki was innocently giving her passionate confession, I felt like David Hideyoshi behind her was looking at Mercator with severe eyes. I could think of several reasons for that, but I’ll hold onto them for now.

Hideyoshi cut between Yuduki and Merc and, with an exaggerated bow, gave his name as Hiromu Mozumi. He’d known Misuzu since they were in university and he was currently employed at the foodstuffs company his uncle runs. He’d been staying at the villa since yesterday.

“Pleased to meet you.”

His manner of speaking was polite, but he flaunted his log-like arms as if he was trying to intimidate Merc.

“Those are some fine arms. Did you do something to get them?” Mercator asked straight. As always, he had a slight idea, but — as expected — he still didn’t have the complete picture.

“From middle-school through to university, I did swimming. Even now, I go swimming on the weekends.”

He looked like he could crush an apple and leave behind nothing but the juice. Merc smiled at Mozumi, completely ignoring his intimidation.

“Mozumi-kun. In his senior year of college, he was almost picked to go to nationals. Such a shame…”  Yuduki said, nostalgically.

“I can see it clearly! I’d have gone as part of the championship cheer squad. And Yuduki would be at home making clothes for Misuzu.” Wakana said in an astonished voice.

“Because I cheer you on by sewing clothes. Riiight?” Yuduki looked at Mozumi’s face. Mozumi’s stiff expression instantly slackened. Wakana let out a sigh, haaa.

“A short while ago, I saw Wakana-san’s cheer-outfit but did you make clothes for Mozumi-kun?” Merc said with a dull expression still on his face.

“Yes, last year. They were competitive swim trunks. I was able to make them in no time whatsoever, though, because they didn’t take much material.” She grinned blankly. Mozumi did a complete 180 and his smile began to twitch. However, Merc still didn’t notice.

“Well, then, I suppose we should go see that cheap mannequin, after this.” He said with a carefree laugh.

“By the way, if there are meant to be five people here, that means there are still two more coming, right?”

Trying to distract from the tense atmosphere, I interrupted in a panic.

“Yes. They went up to Kamikouchi this morning, but they should already be heading back around now.”

As if cued by Kamioka’s words, the living room door opened and two men appeared. The room was completely soundproofed so, when the door was closed, it cut off all the outside sounds — including cars. That being the case, I started to grow suspicious of how Kamioka had known we’d arrived, but the coffee cup left on the table of the terrace outside the room quickly told me the answer.

Both of the newly-arrived men were tall and buff types that would make good sportsmen.

Despite being an ex-cheer club member, Wakana had a fragile body which looked like it’d break if you touched it. Yuduki was petite and dressmaking was in the indoors category. From what I’d seen in the photo, Misuzu was also quite thin. As for the guys, all three of them — Mozumi included — were muscular. I wonder what sort of group they were back in their university days.

Among the men, there was one with an undercut that revealed a bit of his forehead. He was a handsome man with a sharp look in his eyes. The other was a fair-skinned brunette with slender eyes and slightly drooping, gentle features.

“Could this be the rumoured detective?”

The handsome man took a single step forwards with his hand outstretched for a handshake. Mercator stuck out his hand, too, and received it.

“Takuma Inotani. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

They had plans to stay for one week. Since Inotani worked at a car manufacturer in Nagoya, had he frantically scraped up his paid time off for the current gathering?

“Since I had to front-load all my time off, this half month is my limit. And then the other half of the month once I get home is probably also going to be me at my limit.”

With some self-deprecating wordplay, he let out an invigorating laugh. As I thought, he couldn’t enjoy spending an entire month at a resort like Kamioka could.

The other man, the one with the drooping eyes, introduced himself as Kouki Urushiyama. Based on his appearance, you would think he’d have a gentle way of speaking but…

“I already asked the president but what kinda name is Ayu Mercator? He said you were an eccentric so is it a stage name?” He asked outright. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem like he had any ill intent.

“It’s my real name.” Merc replied immediately.

I’d known Merc ever since we were students but, thinking about it, I’d never caught a glimpse of his student ID even once.

“Putting that aside, who’s this president?”

“That would be me.” Kamioka cut in, “Urushiyama works for me. I’ve told him not to call me President, but he has a conscientious disposition. If Misuzu had wanted to date him, I would have happily given my blessing. He’s truly a massive help for the company.”

It seems that he worked in the sales department and so, since he’d been away on a business trip in Tokyo, he hadn’t seen Merc’s efforts in resolving Kamioka’s prior case. Unlike the other members of the group gathered here today, he could have witnessed it so it made this especially frustrating for him.

“It’s just because I have more stamina than most.”

“This guy was a baseball nut from primary school all the way through high school. He even made fourth place in the Aichi Prefecture Top Eight in high school.” Inotani placed a hand on Urushiyama’s shoulder as he teased him.

“He’s always so gentle but, on the thousand-to-one chance someone gets him real mad and he attacks them with a baseball bat, no-one’d stand a chance against him.”

The thought was certainly persuasive, looking at Urushiyama’s arm and pectoral muscles that rivalled Mozumi’s。

“I’d never hit someone with a sacred bat. When I attack, I attack with my bare hands. Not that I’ve attacked anyone before, though.”

“That’s no good. You’re terrifying when you have a bat in your hands, but if you’re bare handed I can dodge you as many times as need be with  my pivot.”

“What, did you two guys get into an argument in Kamikouchi?” Yuduki asked, while watching Inotani’s sprightly steps.

“Nah, we didn’t argue about anything.” Inotani immediately shook his head. “On the contrary, we went to go eat kappayaki together, as harmoniously as can be. But, well, there were a lot of couples about. I mean, it was nothing but couples. So that put Urushiyama in a sour mood.”

“I wasn’t particularly upset.” Urushiyama gently denied it, still with a soft expression on his face.

“We should have taken Yuduki with us. That was the plan at the start.”

“To round out the numbers?” Yuduki turned to Inotani, puffing up her cheeks.

“I also wanted you to go, but you still had some finishing touches left over. But, now that you’re finally finished, we can at any time from tomorrow.”

Now, she turned to Urushiyama.

“Urushiyama-kun. I’m going to be making a costume for Mercator-san. If I do a good enough job making it, Mercator-san says he’s going wear it.”

She said that but, pulling up my memories of a short while ago, I don’t remember him saying anything of the sort.

Putting that aside, I noticed the pupils of Urashiyama’s eyes — which had been kind and gentle — glint sharply for just an instant.

And, of course, Mozumi’s expression stiffened in the background.

In contrast, Inotani just gave a mewling laugh as if he knew everything.

And Mercator… Had a blank look on his face.

***

We headed to the living room for supper from 6:30pm, when the sun was starting to wane. Kamioka had highly recommended that we all eat together and watch the sun dip over the peaks of Norikura.

At the heart of the combined living and dining room was a kitchen space. The large table with highlighted woodgrain could seat eight people, atop it rows of Wakana’s homemade dishes and store-bought dishes blended together. Those in Kamioka’s friend-group knew which were handmade by Wakana but, at first, I couldn’t tell the difference. It’s impossible to tell the difference when you have that much food laid out. From what I heard, cooking was Wakana’s main hobby and she’d been attending cooking classes ever since she was attending university.

Aside from that, I noticed that a photograph of Misuzu with flowers adorning it all around had been placed in the centre of the table. They were all eating like normal, but I felt a little awkward as if we were eating together a funeral service. I looked at Merc next to me; he was bringing his food to his mouth with a cool head.

Somehow, it seems I was the only one bothered by this.

“What should we do about the chairs tomorrow?”

When the sun had dipped behind the peaks of Norikura, lighting it up in silhouette with a halo, Wakana muttered a few words. Right now, with us included, there were exactly eight people sat around the eight-person table, and one more person was coming tomorrow. With nine people, one person would be left out.

“It’s fine. It seems Minagi-kun prefers the terrace.”

I raised my voice as I always did, shouting ‘oi!’, but I realised I was the guest with the lowest-standing. After all, I was just Merc’s plus-one. Thereupon, Inotani immediately piped up.

“I’ll go out on the terrace together with my girlfriend. There’s something I want to do, too.”

“Right, so you two can hog the scenery to yourself, right?” Yuduki spoke up, as if she had an idea.

“There’s no way that’s what you ‘want to do!’”

Both Mozumi and Urushiyama smirked, but Kamioka asked on our behalf.

“Fu, fu.” Wakana let out a meaningful chuckle from next to him. “We spent a whole day picking out the engagement ring.”

“Well, then. Have you decided to do it?”

“Yes. If my girlfriend comes here tomorrow, I’ll give her the ring and propose.” Inotani declared without a hint of bashfulness. His expression was overly invigorated. He was so ridiculously brazen that, at first, we suspected we were being messed with by the two of them.

However, once Kamioka kicked things off with an incredibly earnest ‘Congratulations!’ all the other members began following suit congratulating Inotani. Even Mercator clapped joyously. And I was enticed into letting cheer a ‘My congratulations to you!’

Thanks to that bright topic coming up the conversation grew even more lively. Perhaps swayed by the mood, Kamioka persuaded Merc to buy the holiday home that had just gone on sale next door. However, as he had no interest whatsoever in an ordinary holiday home without any history, he’d flatly refused.

After that, he wanted everyone to hear some detective stories starring Merc but he said,

“Minagi-kun knows more about that than me. At any rate, he’s the one who earns his wages off putting my efforts into print.”

And bluntly put everything on me. Having received that invitation, I couldn’t apathetically decline saying ‘go read my books’, nor could I dodge the subject saying ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

Nonetheless, what story should I tell them?

No matter what episode I told them, the man before me may be a great detective but he was no saint; they were sure to become disillusioned upon finding out he was just a common villain. On the other hand, my conscience wouldn’t permit me to falsely glorify Merc.

Once everyone but me, who was still perturbed, had finished their supper in a cheerful mood and gradually dispersed, an incident occurred.

Mercator spun his top hat round-and-around upon his index finger as he stood up from his seat, however that top hat flew off his finger to hit Kamioka in front of us.

It was rare for Merc to make a blunder. This was probably the first time I’d seen him do so with my own eyes.

Avoiding the top hat, Kamioka lost his balance and fell off his chair. Fortunately, he hit the tatami with his right hand so he wasn’t seriously injured but, when he did so, it seems he’d sprained his right hand.

But when Merc rushed over in a panic to apologise, Kamioka spoke.

“It’s alright.” He said with a smile, but he looked concerned about his twisted wrist.

“It’s rare for you to make a mistake, huh?” I asked the question once we’d returned to our guest room, but instead of refuting me…

“I feel awful for what I did to Kamioka-san.” He said meekly and regretfully. And then, while tilting his head, he grumbled, “As I thought, I’m not in my usual shape.”

It wasn’t his usual counterattack and his way of speaking was in shambles.

“That’s why you’re taking sick rest. Shouldn’t you be relaxing and taking it easy?”

I had no choice but to say those words.

“……By the way, Merc. Will you be able to rest here?”

“Is there something bothering you?” Merc shot back a question.

“I sort of feel like Misuzu-san’s departed spirit is still wandering around, don’t you?”

Her pictures had continued to line the hallways of the guest section. It was the same for the mannequins dressed in the costumes Yuduki had made. Included among them were costumes like the Shinsengumi outfit which Misuzu had worn while she was alive. Merc responded frankly.

“At the very least, it seems like she’s still living on in their hearts. Even now that she’s passed on, she still stands at the centre of the group.”

“Ah, well…”

As impudent as it may be, I wouldn’t be surprised if their thoughts had grown so strong that they’d materialise Misuzu back into reality. Certainly, there was a hole like that which hadn’t been filled in.

“There’s no-one that can fill in the hole Misuzu left behind. It’s like everyone is fumbling their way around a bottomless well with an open cover. It’ll be no wonder when one of them falls in.” Merc muttered meaningfully.

“In other words… If a case occurs? I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“The one who suggested I come here was you. And need I remind you that you are the God of Pestilence. Did you not think that would make the chances of a case occurring skyrocket?”

Whether or not the usual Merc had returned, a nasty smile was plastered all over his face.

2

Fortunately, no murders occurred that night.

I was greeted by a pleasant morning within the quiet highlands’ mountain retreat. Having woken up slightly-early, I took a roughly thirty minute stroll down the morning mist covered promenade, taking in the chilly crispness of the atmosphere. Having finished working out my lungs and eyes, I booted up my laptop and opened up my manuscript. Refreshing my computer, I felt that with Mount Norikura looming high outside my window as my background, I would come up with some good ideas.

However, a few hours passed, lunchtime came but no brilliant ideas had come, all I’d done was intently stare at Mount Norikura. The Norikura mist had completely cleared up now and I could see its unchanging, grand appearance. My manuscript was also unchanged.

Yesterday afternoon Urushiyama and Inotani had gone to Kamikouchi but, today, everyone was present at the dining table. However, after lunch, Yuduki, Urushiyama and Mozumi headed out as a group of three to the Shirahone Onsen roughly ten kilometres away, while Wakana and Inotani supposedly went off fishing in the river Kanegafuchi. While Shirahone Onsen was famous for its milky-white baths, it seems Kanegafuchi is a super secret fishing hole that even the locals don’t go to. Hearing about it in detail, when I made a wrong turn on my way to this villa, we had passed a deep pool. It was so desolate that, finally, I realised that I was on the wrong road. However, I can clearly recall that the greenery atop the cliffs was lush and the waters below were beautiful.

In fact, Kamioka had planned to go fishing, too, but since his sprained wrist hadn’t gotten any better he’d had to cancel. Obviously, this was the result of Mercator’s mistake the previous night.

Since last night, Mercator has continued to meekly apologise through to the afternoon. I feel bad for Kamioka, but if I get to see this kind of Mercator with my very own eyes, I hope he stays injured for just a little longer. Inotani — who was wearing a camoprint shirt — and Wakana — who was wearing a long-sleeved pink shirt and glasses, and carrying a folded-up rod in one hand — waved goodbye to Kamioka and then left the villa in a black Yaris. Apparently, at around ten in the morning, Intoani had received a phone-call from Inotani’s fiancee who had just left Nagoya and he’d let out a yelp of joy.

“How about you give her the river fish you catch along with the ring?” Mozumi had teased.

The three in Mozumi’s group had also followed Inotani out the entryway. They went in the same formation as that old pop group ‘Dreams Come True’, with Yuduki at the front in a blue shirt and Urushiyama and Mozumi at her sides. In contrast, once they’d gotten into the white corolla, it was Urushiyama in the driver’s seat, Mozumi in the passenger seat and Yuduki sitting alone in the back seat. Of course, both of the men were tensely keeping an eye on each other but Yuduki herself didn’t seem to take any notice.

Given the choice, I would have also liked to go to Shirahone Onsen but, even if its waters were transparent, the bath attached to the villa still felt great and so I figured I would visit it when I felt fatigued.

“It’d be nice if, following after Inotani, she settles down with one of them, though.” Kamioka let slip once the car carrying the three had shrunk into the distance and he was let on his own.

Somehow, I could understand Kamioka’s feelings. Inotani had settled down with someone within the group, however if Yuduki or one of the two men were to marry someone from outside the circle, then an outsider who didn’t know Misuzu would be added to the group. It’s not like he could tell them not to come and, if they did come along, would this still feel like his circle of friends?

“Which of them do you think would be best for Yuduki-san, Kamioka-san?” It seemed like a mean-spirited question to throw at him.

“Did you hear that?” Kamioka’s eyebrows flicked upwards in surprise. “I don’t really know about that… As my employee, I want Urushiyama-kun to have happiness but that’s nothing more than my egotistical bias towards him. It’s not just rude to Urushiyama-kun but to Yuduki-san, as well.”

He gave a safe answer, befitting a businessman.

“Can’t you smell the permeating stench of death?”

Once I’d parted ways with Kamioka and returned to the guest room, Mercator spoke.

“I told you so last night, too. An incident is going to occur.”

The thick scent of Misuzu’s death completely engulfed this villa, but I couldn’t sense anything criminal here.

“On one hand, we have a man preparing for his imminent proposal to his lover. On the other hand, a group locked in a love triangle heading to the onsen together. And then a villa wrapped in the shadow of the dead.”

“But aren’t you just hoping that something happens?” I glared at Merc.

“I guess you could say that.” Merc readily accepted it.

“We came here for you to rest. How are you going to do that if you’re anticipating a case the whole time?” I chided him.

But,

“You’re thinking about this all wrong. When I’m fatigued, there’s nothing better for my rehabilitation than a case. I’m even grateful to you for forcing me to come here based on your own selfish desires.”

“You’re talking like it’s already been decided that a case is going to occur… Don’t tell me you’re thinking of stirring up trouble and then resolving the case you caused, like before.”

“Certainly, I wouldn’t be resting if I did that. It’s simply a matter of the stench. I am still just following the whims of fate.”

Having said things that would cause Kamioka — who was brimming with love for the group — to faint, Merc raised the index finger of his right hand and pointed upwards. He then noticed that the top hat which should have been spinning atop it was nowhere to be seen.

“Even now, you’re still not back to my usual condition, it seems.”

“Just what was I doing…”

Merc covered his forehead with his raised right hand. Had he truly fallen into depression? He was in a truly rare state.

“I remember! I’m sure it’s in the library! I placed it on a desk while I was searching for a book I was investigating.”

“In the library on the first floor? What were you researching?”

As I think is necessary for an author, yesterday I had been given a tour of the library. As cozy as the room was, I recall that it held rows of precious classics and complete works of literature.

“I believe you are aware of the Twelve Labours of Hercules. Originally, it was only supposed to be ten, however a particular two labours were decided to have been flawed. As such, another two labours were added and in the end it wound up being twelve; I was curious which two labours had received complaints.”

“I’m pretty sure one was the Hydra, wasn’t it? Since he received the assistance of his squire.” I responded with my vague knowledge.

“Aah, I also know about the Lernaean Hydra. His squire burnt the hydra’s necks. It’s the other one I can’t work out. Since that library has a collection of Greek mythology lined up, I figured I’d investigate there.”

“…Isn’t the other one cleaning the stables? Since he got paid for it.” I answered, looking at Merc’s face.

“That’s it! The Augean Stables! Since he demanded payment from Augeas, it was ruled as invalid. Why on Earth didn’t I think to just ask you!?”

“Well, it’s not like I could have given you the actual name, though…”  Though I was content, I stayed humble. “Unlike slaying a monster, the contents of the request were relatively simple, so you probably forgot.”

“He diverted the flow of two rivers, that’s a flashier thing to do than in the other episodes. Well, in any case, I had expected that would leave me feeling refreshed but… On the contrary, I’m concerned by various things.”

“What’s that?”

“Despite completing ten labours, two of Hercules’ labours were declared invalid. For example, consider if — just like with the Lernaean Hydra — I were to get someone’s help to resolve a case. In that case, there would be nothing I could do if someone complained that it wasn’t my achievement alone. I’d accept that without complaint. However, I can’t agree with the results being overturned based on whether or not a reward was involved, such as with the Augean Stables. Whether or not I’m running a business has no bearing on my reputation as a detective. The police also receive a monthly salary, so why should detectives alone be blind to money or suffer the backbiting gossip of critics? Shouldn’t we be evaluated on our performance alone?”

Mercator griped, emotionally. I didn’t know anything about it, but had he gotten into some trouble regarding compensation before? This kind of grumbling was rare for him.

“To begin with, this was Hercules’ penance to atone for killing his own child, so I don’t think it’d be right for him to accept any compensation. There’s no sense in treating it the same as your work.”

“Is that so?” Merc’s eyes opened wide, seemingly in surprise.

“That’s right. Though it wasn’t Hercules’ fault, it was the result of Hera sending him insane. You didn’t check that part, then.”

“Ah. I was careless. …Just what was I doing?” Merc drooped his head. He looked like he was on the verge of collapsing to his knees, just like that. “Until now, I’ve been engaged in a futile rage.”

Putting aside Merc’s rare mistake, I had some idea why he’d suddenly become interested in the labours of Hercules. In the corner of Merc’s room stood a mannequin that gave off the impression of an ancient Grecian king. Heracles was nearly completely naked, entirely different to the costume of a king, but it wasn’t hard to imagine Merc’s interest in him was because of his connection to ancient Greece.

“Isn’t it because you’re getting wound up about things and not taking your time to rest that you keep making these simple mistakes? Like last night.”

“Perhaps. Anyway, I’m exhausted so would you go and pick up my hat from the library?”

“Don’t worry about it. Helping the infirmed has been the motto of the Minagi family for generations.” I quickly agreed. My family motto was part of it, but also because I was enjoying the rare sight of seeing Merc in a frail state. This was the very first time he’d ever sent someone else to fetch his incredibly important top hat.

It was completely unlike Merc to forget something that even I could remember. He was eagerly anticipating an incident to occur while he’s rehabilitating but, at this rate, even if one were to happen, I get the feeling he wouldn’t be able to resolve it.

Putting simple mistakes aside, did I want the Detective Ayu Mercator to go as far as failing to solve a case?

Though I spent the entire time I was bringing the hat back to him turning that question over in my mind, I wasn’t able to come up with an answer.

Merc’s top hat was gently perched upon the library desk, just as he had said, and the feel of the hat’s brim was surprisingly velvety.

At just before three, Inotani and Wakana returned home from fishing without incident. It seems neither of them had gotten swept away by the river to parts unknown. However, I can’t say they were as successful when it came to fishing having only caught two charr. Wakana hadn’t caught anything at all.

“I didn’t think that fishing would be that difficult.” Wakana sighed dejectedly.

“Fishing is endurance.” Kamioka voiced a proverb. it seems the interest-devoid Kamioka had recently taken up fishing as his sole hobby.

“Well then, we’ll bring you along next time. Far more than two, we should catch over ten fish!”

“That’s just a matter of chance, it’s all up to the whims of the God of fishing, right?” He deflected in a know-it-all way.

“You’ve also got a short-temper, Kamioka-san.” Inotani interjected, while he took off his shoes. That’s when it happened. As he untied his left shoelace, it snapped.

“Seriously?!”  Inotani clicked his tongue. I was also lured in and almost let out a cry. Needless to say, it was an ominous sign. I unconsciously looked at Merc, but he just smirked. It was an incredibly malicious looking grin.

We weren’t going anywhere so we could have simply gotten a different piece of string to replace it but, instead, we continued to stand around awkwardly until the three who’d gone to the hot springs returned.

The entryway was quite spacious but it was far too narrow to have all eight of us gathered there. Reluctantly me and Merc, and the Kamioka couple retreated to the second floor. As we did, I caught a glimpse at the three but both Urushiyama’s calm expression and Mozumi’s cheerful simian grin were lost in contrast to Yuduki whose skin — and, most likely, soul — were glowing thanks to the hot spring.

“Their choice was wrong from the start.”

In the living room, Merc muttered in a voice that only I could hear.

“Even if you were to take someone on a date to the open-air bath, you’d be separated, but with three people the star woman will exit and it’ll be nothing but the two rival men facing each other.” He said matter-of-factly. “Of course, it’s possible that the conversation they had in that bath could have been the sprouting seed of their intent to kill.”

“I feel like you’ve been talking like that since yesterday, but hasn’t everything been fine? Or are you under the mistaken belief that a case will occur just because you want one to? We’re going to be here for half a month, so I’d like to spend that time relaxing.”

He’d been so insistent until now that I was starting to get worried.

“It’d benefit you, too. There haven’t been any compelling cases around us lately. Your stock of novel ideas must be running out around now.”

“You’re hoping that a case occurs for my sake? Stop that. I’m not your biographer, I’m a mystery novelist.”

“I am perfectly aware of the quality of your original works. Which is precisely why I feel such parental concern!”

It was such a sound argument that I had no good response. But that was just the me from yesterday. I’m going to come up with a brilliant trick during our stay, no matter what it takes. I’ll definitely do it and prove Merc wrong.

I’d camped myself behind my laptop fuelled by desire to write but, in the end, an hour passed without anything coming to mind. I looked at the clock, it had turned to four. Yet the sun was still high and the Norikura highlands glimmered verdantly.

As I headed down to take a stroll and clear my head, I spotted Mercator’s silhouette dozing on the first floor’s wooden deck.

On the north side of the villa, at the end of the grass covered courtyard, was a greenhouse that reminded me of the flower-loving Misuzu. The greenhouse was smack-dab in the middle of the plot so it was facing the southern gateposts of the villa. There was about fifteen metres between the villa and the greenhouse. The two of them were connected by a thin arcade-style cobblestone path with a simple roof overhead, it seems you could go back and forth even in the rain. On the side of the villa’s entrance to the cobblestone path the wooden deck had been erected with the same kind of roof attached.

It faced north so it had poor usability, however right in front of the backdoor was a hot-spring bath, presumably so you could enjoy the cool evening air after taking a hot bath.

The instant I was done looking over the greenhouse and was about to begin my walk, his dozing figure sitting on the wooden bench made for two jumped out at me. To my surprise, there was a woman in a violet China-dress sitting beside him. The woman was also tall and the two of them were huddled together, shoulder-to-shoulder.

The great detective and the mysterious woman in Chinese attire.

Thinking I’d witnessed a lovers’ rendezvous, I quietly crept closer to confirm and swiftly corrected my misunderstanding.

The beautiful woman in the China-dress was a mannequin. Well, then, what about Merc? I thought that, but he was the real thing. Still with his legs crossed pompously and his top hat pulled over his eyes, he slept with his head bowed.

He seemed exactly as I’d remembered him and, with a start, he raised his head like a small animal. It was a novel gesture.

“I must have accidentally fallen asleep.”

And then, noticing the mannequin next to him, he asked

“Did you put this here?”

“No. I thought it was a hobby of yours. I was wondering whether or not you slept with an anime body pillow.”

“Absolutely not. But she’s quite a beautiful lady, hm? However, considering someone managed to stealthily put her there, I must certainly have been in a deep sleep.”

“Thank goodness they weren’t an assassin.”

I’d said it as a joke, however…

“Certainly. Considering they left this with me, they had the opportunity to do something like that.”

His lips curled in a self-deprecating way. It was rare to see a befuddled Mercator. Until now, as far as he was concerned, showing vulnerability was nothing but a disgrace. As I thought, you couldn’t call this his usual condition, could you.

Because he was so pathetic, I didn’t needle him any more than that. After a short while, Merc said something as if excusing himself.

“As I was reading a fitting magazine from the magazine rack in the living room, I grew sleepy, you see?”

“Magazine?”

The side table Merc indicated had nothing on it. Just his cane standing against it.

“Did you take it away? How odd.”

Merc was befuddled, once more. His face grew pale, as if he would faint right then and there. Supposing that someone had taken them away, if those magazines were important material for an investigation, he’d be branded as a failure of a detective. His composure was falling apart.

“It was a judo magazine from around three years ago, I picked it up out of curiosity as a faded sticky note that had been stuck in it partway.”

“What was on the sticky noted page?”

However, Merc shook his head.

“I flipped through looking from the first page, but I grew increasingly tired and must have fallen asleep before I reached the sticky note… However, to think that an old magazine would be taken away and replaced with a doll. It seems my body still requires rest, huh.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying! You should slowly recuperate without futilely anticipating a case. That’s what God is telling me.”

Regarding both dozing off and, in that period of time, having the mannequin placed there and the magazines taken away, having multiple rare blunders in succession was really unlike Merc. It would be no miracle even if I were to start sensing God’s Will.

“I never thought I’d see you speak of God before my eyes, however I suppose I’ll be mature this time and keep that in mind.”

Mercator lifted himself up from the bench, and returned to the villa. I opened up the backdoor and took one step out, however I turned back to the China-dress doll once more.

“Farewell. Though I’m sorry to go.”

I left a parting kiss on the back of the mannequin’s hand. This was roughly just after four.

It was just about almost five when the case came to light.

3

The one who came to tell me the bloodcurdling news was Kamioka. He’d gone for a stroll at four and, around five, he’d peeked into the greenhouse. However, upon looking inside, Inotani’s frigid corpse appeared.

“Inotani’s been killed.”

He was so startled, I think, that three minutes passed without him saying anything else.

Mer told him to notify the police and went the the greenhouse. Inside was damp and suffocatingly humid, Inotani lay collapsed face down with his head thrust into the mulch. A slightly-warped metal bat lay beside him.

“That’s the bat from the baseball player mannequin in the library, isn’t it?”

Two mannequins had been placed at the entrance of the villa’s library just like the Niō guardians at the front of Buddhist temples. The baseball player mannequin on the right had been dressed in a uniform with blue undertones, while the mannequin on the opposite side was dressed in a Judo uniform. The black-belted Judo mannequin was barehanded but the baseball player mannequin had a glove on its left hand and a bat was propped up against its leg.

“How terrific. The temporal region has been struck. It’s completely caved in.” Merc mused, impressed, as he looked over the remains and the bat. “Furthermore, it seems the culprit wielded the bat one-handed. I figure they had quite a bit of confidence in their physical strength. Just like Hercules.”

“How can you say that so definitively?”

“It seems there was a slight amount of blood splatter when the victim was struck. There are sporadic bloodstains all along the length of the bat in a straight line. However, the empty area indicating the killer’s grip is only around ten centimetres.”

I looked at my palm. Was the width roughly about ten centimetres?

“If they gripped the bat with both hands, the interruption should have been twice as long.”

“So, they did it one-handed, then? You’re saying that he was knocked out by essentially an oni wielding a metal club, then?”

“And in one hit, too, huh. Did they just have that much confidence in their strength, or did they fly into a blind rage? Well, I suppose it could be both.”

As far as doing it one handed was concerned, that ruled out Yuduki and Wakana. Urushiyama who was in the baseball club and Mozumi in the swimming club both unmistakably had the physique. And Kamioka was a grey area?

Mercator crouched down and examined Inotani’s corpse, however…

“Because it’s in a humid greenhouse, it’s difficult to narrow it down exactly but the murder took place roughly thirty minutes to two hours ago. In other words, in the interval between half-past-two and half-past-four.”

“If I remember correctly, he should have gotten back from fishing at three.”

As soon as I opened my mouth,

“Right. In that case, the estimated time of death becomes from about three to half-past-four. Of course, we’ll probably be able to narrow it even further based on the other testimonies.”

Having a doll placed next to him in the course of his nap should have placed him in low spirits, but right now he was incredibly animated and lively. Could it be that perhaps it wasn’t overwork that had caused Merc to collapse, but having taken on nothing but dull cases?

“I believe you were sleeping on the wooden deck across from here until four.”

“I think that I got there at around half-past-three. So, to my surprise, I’ve become the gatekeeper.”

“But you’d dozed off, so that doesn’t mean anything.”

The side of the greenhouse facing the villa was covered by a blind shade, so you couldn’t see the situation inside. The blind shade had also been down when I’d woken Merc up.

“The shade in that window has been down since yesterday. So it’s not impossible that the murder took place while I was on the deck but… At the very least, it’s not possible that they committed the murder while knowing I was there. If he’s being beaten to death, the risk of the victim raising his voice is too high. The greenhouse’s sound absorption isn’t that good, right? However, it’s possible that the murder took place without the killer knowing I was here, or that I came out onto the deck while the killer was still in the greenhouse following the murder.”

In either case, the culprit and the victim went to the greenhouse before half-past-three.

“However, in the end, neither of those are viable.”

Merc flatly rejected them after making a lap of the greenhouse — which was on the small-side and lacked partitions.

“From the looks of it, excluding the sole door, all the greenhouse’s windows are locked from the inside. If the killer didn’t escape through the front door, they should have escaped through a rear window.”

“Where do the windows at the back lead?”

“They exit down the wall of the neighbouring villa's garden. However, since it’s recently gone up for sale, there’s no-one living there. Kamioka-san told us so during yesterday’s dinner. Had you forgotten?”

I feel like we’d talked about it but I can’t really remember. The circumstances of a neighbouring villa all the way over here wasn’t a topic that concerned me, as a visitor. Unlike Merc, I didn’t have the funds to buy one at the drop of a hat.

“Therefore, regardless of however long I napped for, I feel charging out the front door is a gamble they wouldn’t risk taking.”

“Maybe they were also planning on silencing you too, if they were discovered.”

I was lightly threatening him but he flatly denied it saying ‘that doesn’t work, either.’

“If that were the case, they would have brought the murder weapon — the bat — with them. However, the culprit left the murder weapon here and returned back to the villa barehanded.”

“Well, maybe they were peeking out, watching you while holding their breath until you woke up and went back inside the villa?”

“How would they know when I was going to wake up? If you hadn’t come and woken me up, I probably could have been asleep for thirty minutes to an hour. In that case, I figure they’d promptly sneak out a back window. Suppose that Kamioka-san returned from his stroll early, if he peeked into the greenhouse while I was still here, it’d be curtains for the killer, no?”

That’s certainly true. It’d be one thing if the only exit was the door, but there are multiple windows you could escape from.

“Perhaps the culprit had a reason they couldn’t escape through the windows? Perhaps they have an allergy to the pollen of a particular flower.”

“It’s not impossible, but there isn’t only one window to escape through. It’s hard to imagine that every single window at the back has the flower they’re allergic to blooming. Furthermore, if they have that dangerous an allergy, they wouldn’t have chosen this greenhouse to be the scene of the crime in the first place. In any case, if we’re thinking sensibly, there’s a high probability that the time of the crime was either before I arrived or after I’d gone; three to half-past-three, and then four to half-past-four.”

We heard the sound of the patrol car arriving, just as Mercator concluded his reasoning.

*

After that, the police began inspecting the crime scene and questioning the witnesses. A short, middle aged detective with a bad temper named Katsurafuchi was placed in charge of the crime scene but, as always, Merc had a trick up his sleeve.

“Connections in the top brass, really?! Even though you self-proclaimed detectives are such a pain in the keister. After all, just recently, there was a whole uproar about false accusations. Something about an unjust arrest? So make sure you pick the right culprit, this time.”  

Having voiced his complaints in a husky voice, the detective did what he was told without hiding his defiance. It seems he still held his nerve, to some extent.

There was a large difference between the conclusions of the police’s appraisal and Merc’s diagnosis. The time of the crime was between three and half-past-four. Well, everyone was accounted for at three, so it wasn’t totally different.

However, they were suspicious of Merc’s testimony.

“Weren’t you asleep then?” They smirked and, like they were provoking Merc, said, “If you were asleep, then someone could have gone past you without you noticing, right? Well, once we check the suspects alibis, we’ll have a better idea of that.”

Furthermore, there were no other external wounds or signs of a struggle on the victim, it seems he really did go down in just a single strike of the metal bat.

At two, his smartphone had received several calls and text messages from his fiancee. Apparently, she’d taken a wrong turn on the road and her arrival was going to be drastically delayed. However, since he hadn’t received any calls or messages from three to half-past-four, we couldn’t determine how long Inotani had been alive after that. After the incident had been discovered, Kamioka had called her however he didn’t say anything about Inotani. If he panicked and made a mistake, everything would be lost. Thanks to Kamioka's ability to control his emotions when dealing with people, I don't think the other party particularly suspected anything.

More than likely, his fiancee had also vaguely suspected that Inotani was going to propose today. If so, she must have been driving down the road to the villa with her heart beating fiercely. Maybe she’d taken the wrong road out of excitement.

And yet, as soon as she arrives, she’ll be informed of her beloved’s death. There was nothing more miserable than that. This was all the fault of Mercator’s unspoken prophecy.

If, at the very least, the culprit is arrested by the time she arrives, won’t that bring her some solace?

Surely it couldn’t hurt to suggest as such to Mercator. I did so and, to my surprise, Merc gave a hefty nod of his head and said:

“By all means, we should receive a request from Kamioka-san before we get moving, however I’m currently in the middle of my rest and rehabilitation. I guess it can’t be helped, I’ll have to make like Hercules and take on this challenge without compensation.”

Merc’s condition had nothing to do with sympathy for the victim’s fiancee. If anything, his own pride was the most important factor. He was probably feeling his ill health and so took on the role of volunteer out of fear of the one-in-a-million possibility of failure…

Once I started suspecting that, I was completely convinced that it was so. Was this current Merc really capable of resolving this case? An anxiety like I’d never felt before boiled up within me.

“Why Inotani-kun…”

The very first witness to be questioned was Kamioka who had discovered the body. While he was most likely worn out, he took on the responsibility of looking after his wife and younger friends. That’s just about what you’d expect from a company president who acts without compromise or assistance.

“Would you happen to have any ideas?”

Kamioka quietly shook his head at the heartless detective’s question.

“He was a pleasant young man, I haven’t heard of him getting into any trouble or the like. Assuming he was serious, he was planning on proposing today.”

Fatigue crept into his voice and his crestfallen shoulders slumped. I recall how happily he’d discussed marriage between Misuzu’s friend group. What will happen to that group from here? Would it completely fall apart, I wonder, or conversely would their bonds become stronger like when Misuzu had passed….

“Had Inotani-san changed in any way?”

“No.” Kamioka said, and shook his head again. “Though, I… I don’t speak to him all the time, so I wonder if I might have missed some minor changes.”

The words, like he was giving up, slipped out.

It seemed there could be no mistake that the murder weapon was the bat belonging to the baseball mannequin by the library. If so, the possibility of this being an inside job rose abruptly. I think even Kamioka, who didn’t want to suspect it, had resigned himself to accepting that the culprit and their motive were close to him.

Next, the topic shifted to Kamioka’s alibi.

“In the afternoon, I was in the living room from three til four. After that, I headed outside for a stroll…”

He said that, from three, he was together with Hiroyama and Yuduki. Apparently Yuduki departed from the living room after around twenty five minutes and then at half-past-three, five minutes later, Hiroyama left. Wakana and Mozumi appeared in the living room, as if switching places with Hiroyama, and it seems that the three of them were together until slightly before four.

After that, he strolled around the hiking course in the woods behind the villa for an hour. The woods belonged to the development company behind the villas and various courses were maintained so that  the owners of the villas could freely explore them. My morning stroll had also been on one of them.

While tracing the guide map drawn in a pamphlet with his finger, Kamioka indicated the course he’d explored today.

It seems he was entirely alone during his stroll, nor did he meet anyone. He could hear voices conversing in the distance but, since they weren’t coming from the direction of the villa, he figured they were other guests out on a stroll. And then at five, while he was stopping by the greenhouse upon his return, he discovered Inotani’s body.

He said that he immediately notified Mercator so nobody touched anything in the greenhouse.

“Even though it’s the site of Misuzu’s memory…” Kamioka muttered with his head hanging low as he left the room, but those words brought nothing but a sense of discomfort.

After that, they called in his wife, Wakana. She responded vaguely, as if she was rejecting the gravity of the situation. Right now, her well-maintained beauty and the lustre of her skin felt out of place.

She’d been fishing until just a short while before, so the reality probably still hadn’t sunk in quite yet. I could understand the feeling.

They asked her about whether anyone had a motive or issues with the victim, but her reply was the same as her husbands; she was “overjoyed at the proposal.” Unlike Kamioka, she’d known Inotani since they were in university so we thought she might have noticed something but none of it was relevant. And when they asked her about what they’d talked about at the fishing hole, she casually remarked;

“…Nothing out of the usual. He diligently taught me his fishing technique. In the end, I wasn’t able to catch a single fish, though. While that was happening, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. What should I do about that fish…”

If she’d noticed anything, it seemed she would need a little more time to recall it. It seems the detective had also concluded that they wouldn’t be getting more than that out of her and so changed the topic to the question of her alibi.

“I was exhausted from my first time fishing, so I spent a little while resting in my room on the third floor.”

Wakana testified that until she went to the living room at half-past-three, she’d been alone in her room. Just like her husband testified, when she came down to the living room, Kamioka and Urushiyama were there. At that point, Urushiyama left switching with Wakana and, shortly after, Mozumi entered. They conversed vigorously about fishing until four when Kamioka left for his stroll. Often the two of them would go for a stroll together, however it seems she declined since she was exhausted from fishing. Until Yuduki returned after four, roughly three minutes passed where Wakana was alone with Mozumi. While it was just the two of them, Mozumi began to gripe to Wakana.

When asked what he was complaining about, Wakana replied by dodging the question with a ‘I shouldn’t be the one to say…’ I figure she was telling us to ask Mozumi. Almost immediately after Yuduki arrived, Urushiyama returned wearing a post-bath yukata. After that, she’d taken on the role of listening to the three of them talking about the hot springs. This went on until five when Kamioka informed them that he’d discovered Inotani’s body.

“The shoelaces…” Wakana muttered in a low voice. “The shoelaces on Inotani’s shoes tore. I’m not really the superstitious type, but could something like this have been why? Was someone trying to warn him of the disaster was going to befall him?”

When she said ‘someone’, did she mean Misuzu, I wonder?

“If you’ve been dragged into trouble or you’re under a great deal of stress, for example, you’ll often put too much force into your usual actions. I figure the shoelaces getting ripped was an extension of that.”

Mercator gave an uncharacteristically decent response.

“So it had nothing to do with Misuzu, then.”

Wakana gave a candid sigh. Even so, she still looked uncomfortable. At the same time, I felt that — unlike Kamioka — Wakana was scared of Misuzu.

Next to be questioned was the simian Mozumi. He’d been in living room the entire time from half-past-three and his testimony reinforced Wakana’s. Just like Wakana, he said that at four there was a narrow three minute gap where it was only the two of them and then, after that, Yuduki and Urushiyama arrived.

“What did you complain about to Wakana-san?”

The detective asked with a nasty expression on his face.

“Didn’t you ask Wakana?”

“She wouldn’t tell us the contents, though. If you don’t mind my asking, won’t you tell us?”

“It’s not something I was particularly keeping secret.” Mozumi snapped violently and then continued on in a quiet voice. “But it’s not something I can say outright.”

He hesitated for a moment, and then…

“I wanted to get her advice on a matter of romance.”

“Romantic advice? Wakana-san said you were griping to her…”

“That’s right, from Wakana’s perspective it must have sounded like griping, huh? After all, I should just get on with it and confess, and yet I’m just forever hesitantly wasting the time away.” Mozumi replied in a self-deprecating way.

“Could it be, perhaps, that the person you’re pining for is Yuduki-san?” The sadistic Mercator butted in.

“Aah, yeah, that’s right.” Mozumi glared at Merc. However, he quickly grew introspective. “…Well. Inotani told us he was proposing. It flustered me.”

“And you were wondering if Urushiyama-san had beaten you to the punch.”

“You hit the nail on the head. So, it’s got nothing to do with the incident this time. To begin with, Yuduki — who we were discussing — promptly showed up so there wasn’t any time for me to get any advice.”

His ears having turned red, Mozumi shut down the topic.

“That sounds like it could be a motive, don’t you think?”

It was Inspector Katsurafuchi who halted the flow of the conversation.

“What do you mean?”

“Up until now, nothing that seems like it could be a motive had come up but, finally, one has appeared. For example, in the case that Yuduki-san had previously gone out with Inotani-san, and those embers were reignited now.”

“So, you’re saying I was jealous?” Seemingly shocked, Mozumi laughed it off and said, “I’ve never heard about Yuduki doing anything like that with him. Besides, if I was THAT impulsive, I would have killed Urushiyama a long, long time ago… Sorry, that was a joke. This isn’t the time or place for that. For now, we’re bound by a gentleman’s agreement to win or lose, fair and square”

I anxiously contemplated his anger and shock. Mozumi struggled to spit out the words with all kinds of emotions plastered across his face.

“That is… If anything. No, it’s nothing.”

Finally, he muttered those words. The inspector was interested in where he was going with that, however Mozumi’s mouth had shut like a clam. Shortly after, perhaps because he had also given up, the inspector prompted Mozumi to leave his seat. However, when Mozumi stood up with a look of relief across his face,

“That reminds me.” Mercator interjected. “Was Misuzu-san seeing anyone, back when you were students?”

“No.” This time he responded instantly. “Misuzu was always surrounded by her circle of friends but she was constantly with her childhood friend — Yuduki — so she couldn’t have been dating anyone.”

“In other words, what you’re saying is that she was anxiously hogging Yuduki all to herself, right?”

“No comment.” Mozumi clammed up once more.

Apparently, Urushiyama, Mozumi’s rival, was with Kamioka and Yuduki until half-past-three but, after that, he was bathing in the onsen until he returned to the living room a little after four.

“Didn’t you just go to the Shirahone that afternoon? You were bathing once again?” The dubious inspector asked Urushiyama.

“I’m getting a little irritated, you know?” Urushiyama glared at the nearby Merc. Though he had the same defiant attitude as Mozumi, he was far better looking on account of his gentle eyes. “In the living room, Yuduki only spoke about you. No, not just in the living room, but in the car on the entire round trip to the Shirahone Onsen and back, as well. That’s why Mozumi came with us to the onsen.”

He was a blunt person who spoke frankly without needing to be asked. However, they say that only 10% of what a cunning criminal says is lies and the other 90% is the truth.

“Yuduki left the living room to go modify a costume, I believe, so I also went to take a bath and reset my emotions.”

Urushiyama’s claim sounded plausible. Next, the inspector asked whether or not anything came to mind regarding Inotani’s death.

“Nothing. Besides, I’m a suspect, right?” He asked the inspector in a self-deprecating tone.

The murder weapon was the bat held by the baseball-player mannequin modelled after Urushiyama, who’d been in the baseball club. Certainly, I’d say he had the most practice at wielding a bat.

“Let me just say, for the record, that I would never beat someone with a sacred bat.”

He said as much yesterday, too. That if he was going to assault someone, it’d be with his bare hands. However, what if he wasn’t trying to assault

someone but to kill them?

Beating someone to death with your bare hands would be difficult for an ordinary person. Furthermore, Inotani was also blessed with a fit body. Be that as it may, the culprit still went out of their way to use a model bat as the murder weapon and it was difficult to imagine why.

“You’re employed by Kamioka-san’s company, correct?” Merc asked. “In other words, with Kamioka-san included, you are the person who knows everyone gathered here best. Therefore, in your perspective, is there anyone here of the distasteful sort who’d murder Inotani-san?”

“Among us, the person who would know best is Wakana. No, since she’s the CEO’s wife, when I’m in public I’ve got to call her Wakana-san… Anyway, putting that aside, now that we’re working adults, it’s not like we see each other every single day like when we were students. Well, whenever me and Inotani went drinking together, since we were both fellow wage-slaves, we’d do nothing but rant about our workplaces rather than things to do with our group. However, if Inotani had been killed at his workplace, it’s possible that I might have had a couple of ideas. Well, there’s this and that and such…”

That’s as far as Urushiyama’s interview went.

“I, I was in the living room until around half-past-three… From there, I went back to my room to continue my sewing.”

Having been asked about her alibi, Yuduki replied in a small voice. She’d completely changed from the time she’d entreated Merc to make his costume; she shook timidly like she was a completely different person.

“Th, Then, I ended up not feeling up to it and I wasn’t able to progress with the work, so I returned to the living room at four.”

Seeing her faltering and stumbling, looking down at the ground, as she spoke, it was exactly like a criminal enduring the pangs of their conscience during a confession. Of course, I don’t think that’s what was going on…

Yuduki’s own testimony was consistent with the other suspects, and her words backed them up. When asked about the victim, she said:

“I, Inotani-kun was a gentle and considerate person and Misuzu trusted him. So, if Inotani-kun was killed in this villa…”

“If he was killed?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Again, she hung her head deeply. Could Yuduki have thought of a connection between Misuzu’s death five years ago and Inotani’s death?

“Just… I wonder if Misuzu was watching over this.”

“Ah, so…”

When the inspector, who was growing impatient, was about to half-heartedly pile on the questions, Merc cut in from next to him.

“Did you put that mannequin in the china dress next to me?”

“Did you like it?” Her voice grew more lively and a slight smile crept onto her face. It was a sudden and tremendous change. “Well, how was it? I think you two make a perfect couple, you suit each other.”

“If she was a real woman, you’d hear no complaints from me.” Merc gave a wry smile.

“Right!? It suits a flashy person like yourself, Mercator-san.”

Yuduki’s eyes blazed with fiery passion. Her force was such that it was like she wasn’t just providing mannequins and costumes, but lovers. If Mozomu and Urushiyama could see her now, despite everything, it would give them peace of mind.… Nevertheless, I couldn’t believe this was the woman who until just now was huddled into herself speaking in muttered whispers.

“So, then, around what time did you put it there?”

“Around about three-thirty-five. Since I wasn’t able to get in the right headspace, I left my room to get some fresh air and that’s when I saw the clock.”

Merc went out onto the deck at three so he must have started nodding off in no time at all.

“Mercator-san was taking a nap so I quickly rushed off and brought the doll from the reception area on the first floor.”

“Getting a standing mannequin to sit down must have been no small task. And yet I didn’t notice a single thing going on next to me — once again, I’m a failure of a detective.” Immediately following his self-deprecation, Merc spoke. “By the way, at that time, was there a magazine placed on the side table?”

Yuduki cocked her head. She said that, while she was sure she hadn’t taken any with her, she couldn’t recall if there had been one there. The side table was squeezed between Merc on one side and the doll on the other, so it was probably in her blindspot.

“Therefore, could the culprit have taken the magazine, then?” Merc muttered to himself. And then, as if shifting the mood, he recrossed his legs. “A short whole ago, you mentioned that Misuzu-san was watching over Inotani’s death but…”

He resumed the conversation where it had left off when he’d interrupted Inspector Katsurafuchi.

“This might be Misuzu’s will.”

Yuduki spoke the words as if she was resolving herself for the worst. She’d averted her face, but her words were firm.

“Misuzu still dwells within this villa, that greenhouse is where her beloved flowers are planted. There’s no way something like a murder could have occurred without her consent!”

I’d expected her to discuss the motive which was shrouded in darkness, however somehow it seemed the discussion was heading in a decidedly spiritual direction.

Looking back, Wakana was also preoccupied with the shoelaces that snapped. I wonder if being in this house filled with memories of the departed made them sensitive to those vectors?

“In other words, you’re saying Misuzu-san also held ill-intent towards Inotani-san. Has something or the other come to mind, for example? Say, a motive for why Inotani-san was killed.”

At that moment, Yuduki started to falter. Merc waited patiently. One minute, two minutes. Even Katsurafuchi read the room and didn’t hurry her along. Finally, around three minutes elapsed,

“I don’t understand it. But… Misuzu loved her older brother a lot. Both their parents died one after the other so those two were the only family they had.” Gradually, she began to speak. “…That’s why, if Inotani-san was causing trouble for Kamioka-san, I don’t think Misuzu would approve of it.”

“What an interesting way of thinking!”

As soon as Yuduki left the room, Merc let out an admiring chuckle. It was like he was on the verge of clapping in admiration, too. In contrast, the detective sitting next to him had a surly look plastered across his face. That was the natural response, as far as that detective was concerned.

“She’s grasped the reality of it. This case, I mean.”

“That the murder occurred with Misuzu’s permission, you mean?”

I wonder how serious Merc was when he said that.

“If Yuduki-san is correct, I suppose that’d mean my failing health must have been her way of calling me, huh?” He asked me.

“Since when have you been wrapped up in occult hobbies?”

I suddenly recalled how, in the past, he’d been misrepresented as a psychic detective.

“Calm down, I was merely joking. Even in my current state, I can’t be influenced by the mere thought of the deceased. However, Yuduki-san’s thinking is quite intriguing. I think she may have the makings of a fantastic detective.”

The detective in the seat next to Merc simply knitted his brow more and more.

Allow me to summarise the alibis for the estimated time of death of between three to four. Neither Wakana or Mozumi have an alibi from three to half-past-three, while Urushiyama and Yuduki lack an alibi from half-past-three to four. As for Inotani, the person in question, he returned to his room complaining about an ill omen shortly after returning to the villa at three and nobody had seen him after that.

If we combine that with Mercator’s logic back in the greenhouse, the only ones with an opportunity to commit the crime are Wakana and Mozumi who lack an alibi up to half-past-three, and Kamioka who lacks an alibi from four onwards.

Though Merc’s guard duty had reduced the suspects by two, three still remained. However, because there's no one without an alibi in the time before and after 4, surely we can consider the line of thinking where the culprit hid in the greenhouse until after Mer left is gone

“By the way…” While we were taking a breather on the wood deck, Merc started to bring something up. The mannequin in the china dress had already been packed up.

“I believe you fetched my hat from the library on the first floor. I’m certain that was just after one. At that time, was the metal bat still at the mannequin’s feet?”

“That’s… I can’t really recall.”

I responded frankly, a can of cola I’d pilfered from the fridge in hand. I can clearly remember the rural-looking young man wearing a baseball glove standing there, but I’m hazy as far as the bat is concerned. At any rate, I had the sense that it was there but that was possibly due to my memories of having seen it there the day before.

Anyway, in anticipation of that question, I’d frantically tried to recall but it remained hazy regardless of how desperately I tried. If it had been in the mannequin’s hand, I think I would have noticed if it had disappeared but, being simply placed at the mannequin’s feet, it had left no impression on me.

“I think that it was but it might not have been.”

It seems like Merc hadn’t been expecting anything from me from the outset.

“I thought that’d be the case. Despite you having possibly witnessed an invaluable clue to this incident.”

“In that case, you should’ve gone and picked it up yourself rather than just leaving it to me.”

“It’s just as you’ve said. That was my mistake.”

I never expected Merc to meekly take responsibility to this extent. Before this case occurred, having him be aware of something like that and act accordingly was completely impossible. His acting like it was his own mistake was more scary than anything.

“However, I went to the library at around one. The estimated time of death was the window between three and four, wasn’t it? Even if I did remember, it wouldn’t mean anything.”

“I went to the library at eleven in the morning. I’m certain that the bat was there at that time. If it had disappeared before one, that means that it must have been stolen in that time span.”

“If the Shirahone Onsen group had been away the entire time from the morning, you’d be able to rule them out. However, they only left after lunch. So I don’t see any point to that.”

“That’s true.”

Surprisingly, Merc readily acknowledged my point.

“What the hell. Well then, whether I saw the bat or not, it doesn’t change anything, does it? What the hell were you criticising me for just now? Even you were the one napping right in front of the actual crime scene. If only you’d been awake, we’d definitely be able to rule out Yuduki-san and Mozumi-kun who only have an alibi for half-past-three til four!”

My rage seethed and boiled over and I found myself rebuking him.

“Now, don’t be so offended. If the bat was stolen before one, that means that the culprit’s intent to kill had to have been formed before then. For example, we could have eliminated some sort of feud having suddenly erupted between Wakana and Inotani while they were off fishing together, etc.”

“That may be so. But were you even considering such a possibility?”

“Only moderately, since there’s no end to it once you start speculating on motives, after all. For example, I’ve considered that if Inotani and Yuduki were fooling around together, then Yuduki may have had an intent to kill when she realised she wasn’t his favourite, on account of the wedding ring.”

“I know you can’t help imagining these things because you’re a detective, but you absolutely cannot say that in front of the people in question.” I warned him, just in case.

“You tell me to resolve the case swiftly, and now you’re saying I also need to handle my investigation discretely, what a troublesome person you are.”

“You could just call me an actual human being.” I objected. However, it was a waste of effort.

“Actual human beings are far more human than you. Putting that aside, there’s already no need for any further investigation.”

“In other words… You’ve worked out the culprit?!”

“Aah. Precisely. If you want, I can identify them right this second.”

“Are you serious about that?”

I wonder just how long he’d been eavesdropping on us. The backdoor quietly opened and from inside, the middle aged detective poked his face out.

4

“Were you serious when you said you’d worked out the culprit?” Kamioka, who had gathered everyone in the living room at Merc’s request, asked on behalf of the group.

“Seriously?”

Wakana, seated next to Kamioka, verified the question in a feeble voice. Perhaps because she was so frail, ever since the incident had come to light, she was so pale that I was certain she was going to collapse.

With the mysterious Norikura Highlands laid out behind him, Mercator gave a mighty nod. With his features swallowed in the shadow of the mountain, Merc himself seemed to give off a dazzling halo.

“So who is it? Who’s the culprit!?”

Mozumi pressed Merc while Urushiyama, his rival in love, urged Merc on saying “Please, tell us who the culprit is.”

I suspect they might have forgotten, or maybe they were trying not to think about it. That the culprit was one of them. I suppose that’s a kind of normalcy bias but it’s a common scene.

There wouldn’t be any point to disrupting the atmosphere of the accusation so I backed off slightly and prepared myself for the tragedy to follow.

After silently surveying everyone present, Mercator spoke.

“To begin, there are many mysterious points regarding the details of how got involved in this case. If I hadn’t collapsed due to overwork, I would never have come to this villa. Because of the aberrant deterioration of my health, I had to take a stay of rest.”

“We’re well aware of that.”

Kamioka seemed to be perplexed by Merc’s irrelevant comments.

“And then a murder case occurred. The perplexing thing is that, unfortunately, I was taking a rare nap on the wooden deck. Because of this, the span of the estimated time of death was quite wide. This was truly abnormal for me, who is always so meticulous. At that time, Yuduki-san even played a prank on me, didn’t she?”

Yuduki apologised and hung her head admirably.

“Not only that, but ever since I arrived at this villa, I’ve repeatedly made no end of mistakes. As a result, I damaged Kamioka’s hand, didn’t I? This may be hard for everyone to believe, but these kinds of mistakes are incredibly rare for me.”

“What the hell is this excuse-spouting great detective? I've never seen anything like it.”

Inspector Katsurafuchi muttered under his breath conspicuously. Merc ignored it, his expression unchanging.

“It seems that Minagi-kun here believed that this was all the fault of my ill-health, but was that truly the case? I had my doubts. Would a great detective like Ayu Mercator repeatedly make simple mistakes like any common man? The answer is a definitive NO. In that case, what was the reason for my abnormal, repeated blunders? Since these weren’t ordinary mistakes, there must be some meaning to them.”

Everyone watched Mercator, his voice rising, with blank expressions, unable to comprehend the logic being unpacked before them. Of course, I was no different.

“It’s as I said in the beginning. Because of my sudden and unexpected collapse, I came here for rehabilitation. And then I was confronted with a case. However, in actual fact, isn’t it the other way around? Didn’t I collapse in order to come to this villa which I’d once rejected so that I could be confronted with this case? Since I am a great detective, after all.

In that case, isn’t there a reason for the numerous errors I’ve committed since I’ve come here? No, as long as I am a great detective, there must be a reason. One of these errors was my nap. I dozed off while reading a magazine in the courtyard. Furthermore, if there is a reason for this, there is only one answer. The culprit must have gone to the greenhouse with the victim, killed him and returned all within the space between three-thirty to four while I was sleeping.”

“That’s absurd!”

The inspector let loose that he found this completely absurd. Once again, Merc ignored him.

“The crime took place between three-thirty and four. There is no other explanation for why I fell asleep besides that.”

“So, does that mean that the culprit is either Urushiyama-kun or Yuduki-san?”

I regretted involuntarily blurting that out. Tension ran through the group. It seems they’d realised they reality that the friend sitting next to them just might be the culprit.

However… Those two were the only ones without an alibi for the timespan Merc identified.

“But didn’t you previously say that if the culprit had seen you out on the deck, they would have escaped from the window at the back of the greenhouse?”

“Precisely! However, what if the culprit was under the misapprehension that I was a new tuxedo-clad mannequin created by Yuduki-san? I sleep hunched over so they shouldn’t have been able to see my face, hidden by the brim of my top hat. Furthermore, my fatigue had also caused my skin to grow as pale as a mannequin. In addition, since Yuduki-san placed a doll in a China dress besides me, we inadvertently appeared to be a single set of mannequins.”

“In other words… It couldn’t be me, the one who placed the doll next to you, right?” Yuduki gasped with a start but, upon noticing Urushiyama, she immediately covered her mouth with her hand. Based on his demeanour, there was no hope for the unfortunate Urushiyama.

Saying ’that’s not…’, said-Urushiyama’s already downturned eyes turned even further downwards. Yuduki had wanted to make Mercator’s costume. I don’t know the pace at which Yuduki worked but I suppose she’d been doing the work through last night. Thinking that, Urushiyama had been deluded into seeing Merc and the China dress mannequin as a set of dolls.

……However, as long as he thought there was a possibility that it was the actual Merc, then escaping to the neighbouring villa via the window in the back should have been by far the safer option.

And, thereupon, I recalled Urushiyama’s alibi. He was in the bath on the first floor. He must have been half-naked at the time of the crime before heading straight back to the bath, right? Furthermore, I suppose if he got in the bath it would be simple to wash off any blood splatter.

As I thought that over, Merc spoke.

“There was another mistake that I made. I forgot the Twelve Labours of Hercules which I can usually easily recall. Even Minagi-kun over there could remember them. To wit, I couldn’t help but be irritated due to the nature of my lapse in memory. It was nothing but sheer humiliation.”

Was it that humiliating? I suppose so.

“When I went to the library at around eleven, I inadvertently witnessed the metal bat held by the baseball-player mannequin. While this isn’t particularly important in itself, after that I thoughtlessly left my top hat behind in the library. A crucial article of clothing for a great detective. That is beyond abnormal. Not only that, but I also asked Minagi-kun of all people to fetch that top hat for me. I’d entrusted him with something precious. Normally, I absolutely would have gone and picked it up myself… And so, as a result of Minagi-kun going to pick it up at one in the afternoon, we end up in the unfortunate position of not knowing whether or not the murder weapon — the bat — was there at that time. If I had gone myself, I certainly would have recalled that without fail.”

“Sorry about that. But we wouldn’t have gotten any clues whether or not I’d seen it, anyway, would we?”

“Precisely. After repeatedly blundering, the only thing I’m left with is Minagi-kun’s vague testimony. It’s no different than if I’d never bothered to investigate the library in the first place. However, my having Minagi-kun go fetch my hat was the end-result of my going to the library due to a lapse in memory and, conversely, forgetting said hat there. If there is a meaning to my chain of errors, it can be nothing other than to draw out this vague testimony from him. Well then, what is the merit in the hazy testimony of the Watson, rather than a great detectives?


It’s a difficult question, but there is one answer. Because of the Watson’s stupidity, they cannot progress the case. If he could recall it clearly, the investigation would probably progress. If we are to glean any significance from this, then whoever is impacted — even in the slightest way — by whether or not the bat was present becomes suspicious.“

“But I don’t think anyone is impacted by my testimony.” I reiterated.

“In truth, there is one person. Someone affected by whether or not the bat was present.”

After shooting me a meaningful look, Merc continued explaining his logic.

“There was another mistake that I made. This was the most conspicuous one.”

He began twirling his top hat around on his index finger. This time it didn’t fly off his finger, continuing to spin elegantly.

“As a result of a rare blunder yesterday evening, Kamioka-san’s right hand was injured. It was a complete fiasco... Let us continue to make deductions from this, too, in the same way as we have til now. Suppose that I hadn’t made that blunder. Kamioka-san would have certainly joined the fishing trip. In other words, Inotani-san and Wakana-san went on a fishing trip together, just the two of them, as a result of my mistake. As a result, we discovered Inotani-san’s corpse.”

“Wait a moment. Are you suggesting I killed Inotani-san?”

Shooting up in a panic, while still in a half-seated position, Wakana protested with teary eyes.

“Calm down. Just like we're trying to work backwards from the conclusion to find the meaning in my mistake, we can't overlook the time of death we worked out in the same way. In other words, you have a splendid alibi. Well then, what meaning can we draw from the matter of the fishing trip? The two of you were fishing alone, just the two of you, but what bearing does that have on this case? If it has no physical bearing, then it’s probably psychological. Perhaps this could have been the impetus for the motive. You wouldn’t happen to have any idea, would you?”

Having hear Merc say that as if he’d seen through everything, Wakana silently looked down at the ground.

“For example, say that you and the victim were having an affair and, feeling liberated and free deep in the middle of the mountains with no-one else around, you started fooling around and flirting with each other like a pair of lovers. This is what the culprit witnessed.”

“So…”

The middle aged inspector glanced in Kamioka’s direction. But, far from having suspected it himself, Kamioka was in shock at his beloved wife’s affair, asking “is that really true?” in bewilderment. Wakana, however, just continued to hang her head without saying anything. Her attitude was no different than acknowledging it.

“If I may discuss one more mistake, the magazine that was taken away while I was sleeping. Originally, I had been flipping through the pages, however I unfortunately nodded off without reaching the page with a sticky-note applied to it. If simply falling asleep was the extent of my error, I wouldn’t have gone to the effort of taking that magazine from the magazine rack,  or I’d have successfully read through to the sticky noted section, or when I woke up the magazine should have still been left close at hand. Now, at last, it’s clear that the culprit was constantly passing me by. In that case, on that occasion, couldn’t the culprit have noticed the magazine and inadvertently taken it with them without thinking? For example, suppose they knew that they appeared in the sticky-noted section. It wouldn’t be strange that, in their heightened state following the crime, if a magazine which they appeared in was intentionally placed besides a doll, that they would unintentionally pick up that magazine out of shock. However, since there was blood splatter on their hands — even if it wasn’t much — they would have to take the magazine with them and dispose of it… That magazine was a judo magazine.”

Whether they’d suspected or not, everyone gasped in realisation. In his overbearing manner, Mercator spoke.

“That’s right, judo. The culprit wielding the metal bat single-handedly managed to kill Inotani-kun in a single strike. If they’re a judo practitioner, it should be possible. Of course, it would also be possible for a swimmer or a baseball player. Thus, for some reason, it was a judo magazine I procured. I have absolutely no interest in judo whatsoever. There were many other magazines available. And yet, I took the one on judo. Yes… Judo. Come to think of it, while Yuduki-san was rehabilitating previously, she sewed outfits based on all of your uniforms. Mozumi-kun was in the swimming club and Urushiyama-kun was in the baseball club, Wakana-san was a cheerleader, a mannequin was made wearing each respective costume. Furthermore, the baseball mannequin placed in the library is standing across from a mannequin wearing a judo uniform… Incidentally, is there anyone among you who has any experience with judo?”

“There’s no way Inotani was a judo practitioner, was he?”

A light-weight, slender-yet-muscular judo practitioner wasn’t out of the ordinary. But Inotani was tall. Merc shook his head in response to my question.

“He bragged about dodging Urushiyama-kun’s punch with a pivot. So he was in the basketball club.”

It seemed that Merc was right, no-one raised an objection.

“Kamioka-san has no hobbies, besides fishing which he’s only recently taken up. From the very beginning, Misuzu-san’s body was too weak for any sports. Obviously, it wasn’t Yuduki-san herself.”

As the sun set, the mountain was shrouded in twilight. However, no-one made to turn on the lights. Mercator simply looked around the room as he struck the finishing blow.

“Now, let me solve the case. The culprit mistook me for a mannequin. In other words, the culprit is someone who hadn’t seen me even once before. Nevertheless, even though they should have taken the back window if they felt even the slightest twinge of anxiety, the culprit didn’t choose to do this. That’s because the culprit is someone who didn’t know that the neighbouring villa is currently empty because it’s up for sale. The state of the villa is something that Kamioka-san told us during dinner yesterday evening. In other words, the culprit did not attend yesterday’s dinner. Furthermore, the culprit is someone who would be impacted by whether or not the metal bat was in the library at one in the afternoon. Among those of us here there is no-one that is applicable to. However, what about someone who departed from Nagoya at around ten in the morning. If the bat had been taken away before one, since it has been established that they couldn’t have arrived before one, then the fact of the matter is that they couldn’t be the culprit. Minagi-kun’s testimony has weight for that person alone. Furthermore, we also lost our way and ended up at the fishing spot Kanegafuchi en-route to this villa. What if someone were to take the wrong path in the same way and witness the scene of their lover having an affair. To have worried untold times in the past about their partner cheating and then to discover that, of all people, it was with one of their mutual companions, the blood would likely have rushed straight to their head. They’d secretly arrive at the villa, get in touch with the victim to scope out the situation, and then call them out to the greenhouse. And then, with the bat they procured from the library, they’d beat the victim to death with all their strength. They’d then depart the villa in a panic and make up an alibi about having been lost en-route the whole time. In other words, the culprit is…”

At that moment, someone came dashing up the stairs.

“Mercator-san. The woman you were talking about has arrived.”

It was a young police officer. Merc must have told him everything. The middle-aged inspector was making a face that said ‘why not me?’ However, no-one got in Merc’s way.

“Let her in. It’s time for the leading lady to take the stage.”

Merc turned around to face us all once again.

“That’s all from me.” He announced, with a light bow. And then, without any change, he drew close to my ear.

“As per your request, I found the culprit before the fiancee got here.” Merc whispered in a quiet, self-satisfied voice.

Indeed he did, however…

The solemn footsteps grew closer and stopped in front of the door.

With the setting sun, the living room was in darkness. Gently, the door opened and the light from the corridor illuminated the inside of the room.

With her back bathed in that spotlight, her muscular limbs protruding from her colourful one-piece, the completely Hercules-like judo woman made her appearance.

(Note: This is an older translation that I didn't post before now so all names are in Western Order.)

[liljplibrary]

Autumn Leaves, Picturesque in their Fall (Part 2 - Solution)

Read Part 1 HERE.

(Illustration by アオジマイコ from Mysteries! Vol. 100)

CHALLENGE TO THE READER

All the clues have been presented. Now, then – Who is the culprit?

___________________________________________________________

“Well, then. Shall we head back to Nakano Springs?”

After reporting the incident to the police, Kisarazu promptly turned back towards the inn. He truly had no interest in going down to where the body lay. Far from examining the body, he left even though – due to the victim being face down – you couldn’t even see its face from the observation deck. 

“Don’t you need to identify the victim?” I asked, just to make sure.

“Ah, I can pinpoint who the victim is from the clues presented, you see. Moreover, when you write the novelisation of the case, you’ll probably end up inserting the challenge to the reader at this point. If I boorishly confirmed the victim's identity, it wouldn’t be fair on the reader.”

Kisarazu was considering my duty as the Watson to novelise the case, what a gracious Great Detective.

“Unless, perhaps, you’re willing to go down there and check for me?” He added.

“I’ll have to politely decline that.” I refused while looking down at the slope slick with mud from the rain. No matter how much I boasted of my role as Kisarazu’s Watson, I wasn’t eager to throw my life away. It would be a complete waste for the Watson to end up wrapped in bandages like a mummy – or worse – attempting to identify the victim.

“Then let’s go.”

As if he already knew what my response would be, he started walking ahead. He was heading towards the alternate path, rather than the way we’d come here. He probably wanted to check whether the culprit had left behind any traces on their way. But in the end, it didn’t seem like the culprit had made any mistakes.

“So, who’s the culprit? That you were concerned about the challenge to the reader presumably means you’re ready to demonstrate your logic without needing to put on any more airs.”

I asked the question en-route to the inn. Unlike the way we had come, trees pressed on us from every side and so it felt like the entire mountain was enshrouded in the dampness following rain.

“That’s right.” To my surprise, Kisarazu gave a ready nod. The orderly tempo of his steps faltered. “Firstly, consider who the victim who fell from the observation deck is. The victim was either lured out to the observation deck by the culprit, or else they had set up a meeting with the culprit there of their own accord. Either way, they came to the observation deck and were then killed by the culprit. Since the earth under the ping pong ball was relatively dry, I believe the culprit must have arrived either before the rain started to fall or immediately after it had begun. Still, since the victim and the culprit took different routes to the observation deck that means they didn’t come together but rather left the inn separately and met up at the crime scene. Are you following so far?”

“Because, if they had climbed up the stairs together, the killer wouldn’t have intentionally taken a different route from their target since that would just arouse the target’s suspicion, right?”

“If the culprit said they wanted to take the alternate path, the victim would probably have gone with them. There’s no reason that only the victim’s footprints would have been erased.” Kisarazu added. “The two of them came to the observation deck separately. And so the victim wasn’t suspicious at all when they ran into the culprit there. This can be inferred from the way the victim stopped at the sightseeing spot and casually took in the view. In other words, the victim hadn’t expected that they would be attacked or killed at the observation deck whatsoever and chose to take the shrine path rather than the alternate route of their own free will. Are you still following?”

“All good.” I didn’t know what was the correct response so I just gave my default response. 

“The victim took the shrine path by their own volition.” Kisarazu repeated. “Consider what would have happened if this was, say, Saitozaki. Do you think that the acrophobic Saitozaki would go out of his way to choose the route which requires him to cross the wooden rope bridge?”

“Not a chance.” I exaggeratedly shook my head. “After seeing that pathetic display yesterday,  if it’s Saitozaki, he’d probably take the alternate path.”

But if I agreed completely, that would be boring. So I raised an objection befitting my Watson role.

“But,” I started, “what if the culprit assumed we’d think he wouldn’t be able to, and so provoked him into going down the shrine path? Like his friends did to him yesterday.”

However, Kisarazu laughed scornfully.

“Why would they do that? In order to make us think the victim isn’t Saitozaki? However, they left it on the cliff and it’s not like they cut off the head or hands of the corpse. If the police investigate, they’ll quickly work out who the victim is. No, even without the police, if the footholds were just a little less slippery, we might have done it ourselves. If they didn’t want us to find out who the victim was, they should have thrown the body off a little further to the side and let it drop into the ravine. Even if they made a mistake and dropped the body where they did, they should have climbed down there and thrown the body off the cliff a second time. No matter how dangerous the footholds were, unlike us outsiders, they would have had to weigh the risk of the murder against that and become desperate.”

“I see.” I nodded. “It’s not like the murderer could hide the victim’s existence, could they?”

“In the first place, if we go back to the inn, it’ll be easy to determine who is still alive and whose whereabouts are unknown. In the first place, the pattern for these kinds of clues is usually that Saitozaki is the culprit and he intentionally took the shrine path in order to argue that he couldn’t be the culprit. He could take advantage of how his acrophobia means he wouldn’t take that path in order to take control of the investigation.” Saitozaki explained, “But, in reality, the culprit was the one to take the alternate path. That’s clear from how the footprints at the observation deck and the entrance to the alternate path had been erased. And so the exceedingly rational conclusion to draw is that the culprit took the alternate path in order to not leave any footprints. In other words, the victim took the shrine path. And, unlike the culprit, the victim had no reason to devise a particular route to take.”

“In other words, from there we can narrow down the victim’s identity?” I asked.

“Similarly, if we consider that the victim took the alternate path, then we can presume that they aren’t Ayana who only brought high heels.”

“Hm, well, I get that – because the victim took the shrine path – the body isn’t either of those two, but…” I raised another objection. “What if the victim was also scheming something – say, they were initially intending on killing the culprit but the culprit managed to turn the tables on them? In that case, then it wouldn’t be unnatural that the victim’s – the initial culprit’s – footprints were left on the shrine path.”

Assume Saitozaki or Ayana were planning to commit the crime, and deliberately left footprints on the shrine path. This way they could convince the investigation team to exclude them as suspects on account of the fact that they couldn’t take the shrine path.

“It would be incredibly unnatural.” Kisarazu argued. “If you’re going to commit a crime, it’s only natural to take the alternative path where you won’t leave footprints so, if the culprit has gone out of their way to take the shrine path, the possibility that it’s a cover up would inevitably follow. The police aren’t so naive as to be deceived by such simple misdirection, nor is it likely the culprit would expect them to be. Therefore, we can conclude that the victim was the original target and that nothing like the victim turning the table on the culprit happened.”

“In other words, the footprints left on the shrine path weren’t a misdirect of any kind, then?”

“Precisely.” Kisarazu nodded. “So, let’s continue to narrow down whose footprints those could be. The remainder are Kashii Daichi and Nata Yasuo, Wajiro Satomi and Umino Nakamichi, Doi – the proprietor of Nakano Springs, and us. Naturally, even if it’s possible for one of us to be the culprit, we couldn’t be the victim. Unless you’re actually a ghost, that is.”

“You can clearly see that I’ve got legs.”

I made a show of sticking both my legs out as I walked.

“Still, Doi-san headed out in the car on a shopping trip and he still hasn’t returned. We saw that the parking lot was devoid of cars when we left the inn, after all.” Kisarazu explained. “If he’s the culprit, he could have parked it somewhere else and secretly returned. However, I doubt the culprit would use a cheap trick like that only to meet up with the victim.”

“What if, for example, the victim was also guilty of something and used that same trick in order to speak with the culprit in secret?”

“You’re dead set on placing doubt on the victim, aren’t you?” Kisarazu said with a wry smile. “You’re forgetting that the crime scene was an observation deck famous for its autumn leaves. No matter how desolate it is, it’s a place where people could show up at any time. Is this the kind of place where you'd hold a secret conversation worth going through all the trouble of switching parking spots for? In fact, the two of us actually did go up to that observation deck for the sake of sightseeing, initially. If the victim really was colluding with the culprit, they should have met up somewhere they could be better assured would be devoid of people. Like that Bloody Maple River. Considering that from the other perspective, I think it’s likely the culprit chose the observation deck so that the victim wouldn’t suspect anything.”

“I see!”

“So, based on that, the victim isn’t Doi-san… Next is Wajiro Satomi. When we went to the bath at half-past-two, she seemed to be heading the same way. Though Ayana coincidentally refused to go due to feeling ill, if Satomi was supposed to meet someone at the observation deck, I doubt she would have invited Ayana to go to the hot spring with her. In other words, the one who left those footprints couldn’t have been Satomi.”

“But… What if she initially intended to take a bath but, afterwards, she agreed to meet with the culprit at the observation deck? There was plenty of time for her to have that change of heart.”

“It’s just as you’ve pointed out. You’ve gotten good at making Watson-like remarks.” Kisarazu replied cheerfully but was he seriously praising me? For now, I’ll take it as a compliment.

“A little while ago when we were heading to the lower shrine, there were signs that there were people using the bath behind the fence, no?”

“Aah.” I nodded while recalling my memory. “I could hear the sound of someone splashing in the bath.”

“In that case, do you know who was in the bath?”

“Uh, well. Do you know?”

“Of course.” A smile appeared on Kisarazu’s face as he responded to the question I’d thrown back at him.

“I just happened to overhear this while we were eating but…” He opened with that preface. Eavesdropping is the right of a Great Detective. “Saitozaki never takes a bath while the sun is still out. That’s just what he’s like.”

“In other words, you’re saying it wasn’t Saitozaki.”

“That’s it in a nutshell. Furthermore, it also can’t be Kashii whose skin reacts badly to the spring water. He wouldn’t dare think of getting back in the bath after yesterday. Even assuming he’d worked up a sweat for some reason, he could just wash himself off in the dressing room shower.”

“So, then it’s not Kashii?”

In the midst of narrowing down the victim via process of elimination, I’d been thrown off balance by an entirely different process of elimination cutting in but I quickly regained my bearings. This process of elimination was to pinpoint who was in the bath when we’d passed by it. 

“Ayana had a slight cold so she also shouldn’t have been in the bath.” Kisarazu continued his explanation. “She’d explicitly refused Satomi’s invitation, after all. Furthermore, Umino had already been in the bath once that day before we headed in. Putting aside going bath hopping at a hot spring resort, it’s hard to imagine someone getting back into the exact same bath after such a short period of time. In the first place, thanks to your wicked prank, the bath would have been the last thing on his mind. Even in the unlikely event he’d gotten back in to cool his head, as soon as he heard you walking around on the other side of the fence like last night, he should have come closer and said at least something in complaint – just in case you were up to mischief once again. However, the hot spring enjoyer was completely serene. Speaking of being serene, Nata’s style of bathing is splashing hot water all over the place and generally just being a nuisance to everyone.”

“In other words, you’re saying the image of someone quietly enjoying the bath doesn’t apply to Nata, then?”

“And Doi-san had gone out. The idea of him only pretending to go out and then coming back to get in the bath is even more bizarre than doing so to go to the observation deck. And, once again, the two of us were passing by on the other side of the fence. In other words, that means the person in the bath is the only person left: Satomi. Since the sounds came from behind the plaster wall on the far side of the wooden fence, that also explains why they were so dim. Just as I originally surmised. Therefore, Satomi is not the victim. It’s impossible that the victim overtook us to get to the observation deck.”

Well, that’s only natural. Even if it was possible for the victim to overtake us by running along the alternate route while we were walking up the shrine path, it would contradict the fact we’d followed the route the victim’s footprints took up that same shrine path.

“Next is the ping pong ball that was dropped at the crime scene. Did you notice the round bulge in the back pocket of Umino’s pants during last night’s ping pong session?”

“Aah. He probably stepped on the ball and unconsciously slipped it into his back pocket.”

Since I hadn’t seen it firsthand, this was just a guess on my part. But I figured he was trying to hide his embarrassment.

“Well, then.” I asked. “Is Umino the victim?”

“No way!” Kisarazu laughed that off. “The crime occurred before it started raining. But Umino was biting your head off over the prank when the rain first started to fall. Since the victim’s body had already been abandoned before the rain started to fall, there’s no way he could be speaking with you when the rain began.”

“Well, then, maybe that Umino was a ghost!!”

“If you want to believe that, go ahead. We have a right to freedom of thought in Japan.” Kisarazu curtly brushed me off. “In any case, when he was tearing you a new one back then, the ping pong ball was still in his pants pocket. In other words, the ping pong ball at the crime scene was a different ball. This is just my own personal belief but I don’t believe in ping pong ball ghosts either.”

“What kind of ghosts DO you believe in? Or that is to say, what does it mean that there was a ping pong ball at the crime scene, then?”

“Just that there was someone who did the same thing as Umino. Someone who accidentally stepped on a ball and unconsciously slipped it into their pocket. And just like Umino it was still in their pocket – on their pants or their jacket, I don’t know – the next day. And then it fell out of said pocket when they were attacked at the crime scene. In other words, the victim is one of the people who participated in playing ping pong last night.”

“Hold on, there! You’re jumping to conclusions way too fast.” I butted in. “Isn’t it possible that it was the culprit, not the victim, who dropped the ball?”

Before I knew it, we’d reached the stone stairs. There’s nothing more dangerous than descending wet stairs. I made sure not to get too wrapped up in listening to Kisarazu’s deductions that I missed my footing as I asked the question.

“The white ping pong ball was incredibly conspicuous on the dirt.” Kisarazu replied. “Leaving aside the back of the shrine, the ping pong ball fell in front of the shrine where there’s no chance you’d fail to notice it. If you picked up the ping pong ball last night and put it in your pocket, there is a high chance that your fingerprints would be all over it. There’s no way that the kind of cool headed culprit who, after the crime, casually swept away and destroyed the footprints they left at the scene would overlook that ping pong ball.”

“Well, then. What if they intentionally left it at the scene? In order to make the investigators think that the culprit is someone who participated in the ping pong match.”

“That would make the culprit Kashii, who was the sole person who didn’t attend the ping pong match… What point would there be to doing that? Since everyone but Kashii was there, naturally the victim must have also shown up. So the investigators would simply assume the victim dropped the ping pong ball. A cheap trick like that only works if the victim also didn’t take part in ping pong. However, thanks to our breakfast conversation, Kashii also knew that everyone but him played ping pong last night. And therefore, that even if he intentionally dropped the ping pong ball there, it wouldn’t take any suspicion off him.”

“In other words, you’re saying the victim dropped the ball.” I confirmed.

“Seeing as the culprit had no reason to leave it there, that’s right. And since the victim is one of the people who took part in the ping pong game, that means we can say that Kashii – who didn’t – is not the victim.”

“...Well, then. Does that mean that Nata is the victim, since he’s left over?” 

There shouldn’t be anyone left that’s connected to the case.

“Bullseye. And with this we’ve finally identified the victim.” A deeply relieved smile appeared on Kisarazu’s face, as if he was on the Space Battleship Yamato finally arriving at Iscandar. However, there was still the journey home. The part that was almost entirely cut from anime.

“But… Come to think of it, isn’t this a topic that’s readily settled if you just go down the mountain and identify the body? The problem is who killed Nata.”

Actually, the body thrown over the railing was wearing clothing that suited Nata. No matter how you looked at it, it was definitely not Ayana.

“Don’t be hasty; now that we’ve established that the victim is Nata, the rest is simple. Just like Yamato’s journey back from Iscandar.”

Was this a case of simultaneous invention, or had he been reading my mind when I thought that… As expected, Great Detectives are fearsome folk.

“Since the victim is Nata, an unnatural point arises.” Kisarazu continuued. “When we arrived at the inn and received our keys from Doi-san, Nata placed his key into his waist pouch. According to what the students said, it seems that carefully looking after things that are important was in Nata’s nature. However, at the crime scene, there was a key that had fallen besides the body. Only a key. As long as the victim is Nata, it’s hard to believe that he just happened to drop the key at the moment he was murdered, or that the key just happened to spill out of his pouch when he was thrown off the cliff by the culprit.”

“So the culprit intentionally threw the key down there?” I asked.

Kisarazu silently shook his head.

“The five sided wooden charm attached to the key was completely pinned under the body. There’s no way that the key was thrown down after the crime. It must have dropped beforehand. Nevertheless, there is one more question to be answered.”

“One more question?” I asked.

“Why didn’t the culprit throw the body into the ravine?”

“An accident… is hard to swallow.”

Based on the way the footprints had been erased, the body must have fallen straight down. Yet, just by moving a little bit to the left or right, it should have been simple to drop it into the ravine below.

“It is, isn’t it. The culprit purposefully dropped the body in a place that’s easy to spot. It’s like they wanted the body to be discovered.”

“Perhaps they’d construct an alibi or something?” I wondered. “Like, if the body was discovered too late, then the estimated time of death would be widened and a trick like that would be ruined.”

“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect someone to show up at that observation deck eventually but, at the same time, it’d be far from miraculous if nobody showed up, either. Moreover, if they were hoping for the body to be found reasonably quickly, there was no need to dump the body at all.”

“Certainly, if the culprit left the body in front of the shrine, it would be even easier to discover.”

Kisarazu gave a light nod.

“Why did the victim dump the body in such a half-assed spot?” He asked. “Why was the key pinned under the corpse? There is one answer that explains both. Because the key had already dropped in that spot, the corpse was dumped where the key had fallen.”

“So we had the order of events backwards? But why would they do that?”

“To make us think that the key fell together with the body.” Kisarazu answered. “Put another way, it would have been suspicious if the key alone had fallen. Everyone knew that Nata had carefully and deliberately tucked his key away. Even when being murdered, no matter how violently he struggled while fighting back, Nata would never have dropped his key. However, if a key had accidentally fallen in the struggle, it would be natural to suspect that it was the culprit’s– Not Nata’s.”

“In that case, shouldn’t they have climbed down the cliff to retrieve it? Rather than going out of their way to throw a heavy dead body down there, instead.” I argued.

“Normally, you’d be right. However the rain last night had left the cliff perilously muddy, so do you think they could erase all the evidence that they’d climbed down that cliff and then all the way back so that not a single trace remained?”

“No matter how close it might be to the victim, if it’s the key to someone else’s room, isn’t it still practically a confession from the culprit, though?” I said. “That’s fatal evidence.”

“As long as it’s the key to someone else’s room, right?”

Standing in front of the Earthly Shrine, Kisarazu looked just like an oracle of Chyulhu as he muttered the words.

“As long as you have no other choice, you’d be forced retrieve it. However, there exists a sole person who could handle it even without taking that risk. The person who was sharing Nata’s room: Kashii Daichi, he is the culprit! Kashii took Nata’s key from his waist pouch and then dropped him off the cliff.”

Kashii’s square face flashed through my mind. Even though he was small, it felt like he was still strong in his own way. 

“But… Even though they’re sharing the same room and have the same keys, to boot, wouldn’t Kashii’s fingerprints be all over his key?”

“I’m sure that’s what the investigation will find. However, that can be explained by Nata taking the wrong key if we assume that, since they were sharing the same room, both keys were placed together on the same table. After all, the only one who can testify as to where Nata kept his key in the room is Kashii.”

“Isn’t that explanation risky, though?”

Even if it wasn’t fatal, it would surely raise other people’s suspicions.

“You’re underestimating this tactic, going down and retrieving the key is also just as dangerous. Climbing back up a steep slope while covering your tracks is a Herculean task; your foot might slip causing you to unconsciously grab hold of the grass and leave blood or sweat all over the scene. Or perhaps you’ll get mud all over your pants and have that stick out. Nevertheless, if it was the key to a different room, the culprit would have no choice but to retrieve the key without complaint. Weighing the risk of this crucial evidence against climbing down the cliff to retrieve it, it can’t be anyone but Kashii!”

“...And his motive?” I wondered.

But Kisarazu just said ‘beats me’ and shrugged. Unlike his deductions which were pregnant with tension, his posture suddenly slumped anticlimactically.

“However, I did happen to hear that there was one seminar student who suddenly happened to back out of this graduation trip.” He added. “I presume it’s related to that.”

***

Kashii readily confessed when the police grilled him based on Kisarazu’s deduction. 

“That fucker was a piece of shit who deserved to die.” He’d spat. “I don’t regret it in the slightest.”

I was told that Kashii didn’t display an ounce of repentance and viciously tore into the dead Nata. And yet he’d stubbornly kept his mouth shut when it came to his motive. Even though he spat abuse at Nata saying he’d never forgive him over and over again, he’d clam up as soon as he was asked what Nata did that couldn’t be forgiven.

All he revealed was that he swore to kill Nata as soon as he saw the flame-decorated dadaiko drum resembling birthmark on Nata’s left shoulder when they’d bathed in the onsen the previous night. The reason that Kashii had shut himself away in his room that night was not because his skin was itching, but in order to steel his heart and mind in preparation for enacting his murder plot. 

Since his rash had been a lie, the possibility that the person in the bath when we’d taken the little path around the inn wasn’t Satomi but Kashii emerged. In that case, the victim would have been someone else, which means that (by extension) the killer – who must have shared a room with the victim – would be different, but to that Kisarazu just said this:

“Because he’d given that lie, regardless of the reason why, even if Kashii wanted to wash himself, he would have had to use the shower in the dressing room.”

“I can imagine what the motive that lead him to murder might have been but let us not pry into it any futher.” Kisarazu quietly spoke those vague words having enquired into the state of the police’s questioning. He simply had no interest in investigating this terrifying tale any more than this.

“It’s not like someone’s requested that I get to the bottom of this case, after all. Most likely, I feel this is a secret that Kashii will take to his grave – never to be revealed.”

And, in actual fact, Kashii’s motive did remain a secret for all time. While being interrogated by the arresting officers, Kashii abruptly disappeared into thin air from the station’s bathroom. Of course, he was being monitored so there’s no way he could have slipped out the bathroom window. And yet, without even leaving behind a glass slipper, Kashii vanished from this world just like dry ice.

In any case, this exceedingly miraculous event was the police’s failure.

***

When Umino heard that the Kashii had confessed to the crime and that the police had taken him away, he couldn’t hide his shaking. The fact that Nata had been killed was enough of a shock in itself, but then Kashii confessed immediately after.

It was all happening way too fast and he didn’t have enough time to digest a single part of it.

On top of that, while he was cowering over Chyulhu’s curse, a real murder with real killing intent was taking place. He felt just like an idiot jumping at his own shadow.

As Kashii was gravely escorted into the police car, Umino wondered what would happen from here. The expression that looked like relief on Kashii’s square features Umino had glanced through the car’s rear window continuued to play in the back of his mind. 

He wondered if they would ever meet again. But, then again, they didn’t have a deep enough relationship that they’d go out of their way to meet face-to-face. Even now, he still couldn’t understand why Kashii had killed Nata.

All he knew was that his classmates had been reduced by two. No, by three… For some reason, he felt that Matsubara wasn’t coming back. Kashii and Matsubara were close but were they going out together?

In order to relieve his feelings of stagnation, Umino headed to the bath alone. The sound of footsteps came from the other side of the fence. They were on the shrine path that lead up to the Earthly Shrine. The sun was setting and the world was blanketed in dusk.

Perhaps it was another of Tojo’s pranks, that guy really hadn’t learned a thing from last time… Thinking this, Umino drew close to the fence and looked over to the shrine. However, to his surprise, he saw the back of Kashii’s figure. But he wasn’t alone. He was walking hand-in-hand with a kimono-clad child.

No way, did Kashii escape from the police and take a hostage?

However, Kashii wasn’t forcefull dragging the child along, instead the two of them were walking together at the same slow pace, as if they were two close friends on a stroll. Like the parent-and-child on the children-crossing sign.

However, unlike Kashii who was wearing the same outfit he wore that afternoon, the child was clad in a kimono as old as something out of a period play and as pure white as winter snow.

The bizarre atmosphere made Umino unconsciously tried to call out to them but no sound would escape his throat.

And then, before Umino knew it, the two of them had gone around the back of the Earthly Shrine and disappeared into the little grotto as if they’d been sucked in.

Had that hole been big enough?

The second the two of them disappeared into the grotto, the child alone turned back and looked in Umino’s direction. An inhuman smile appeared on its pure white face.

And in the next moment, the wind blew and the camellias’ white petals soared threw the air, landing on each of Umino’s eyes. And his vision was shrouded in darkness.

From that moment on, the light was gone from Umino’s eyes. If you enjoyed this story, please buy the anthology here (or wherever you can get Japanese books.

[liljplibrary]

Autumn Leaves, Picturesque in their Fall (Part 1 - Problem)

(Illustration by アオジマイコ from Mysteries! Vol. 99)

Autumn Leaves, 

Picturesque in Their Fall

By Maya Yutaka

From the anthology "You Are The Great Detective, Too" 1

“I’d assumed this inn would be an old-fashioned hot spring, being called Nakano Springs and all, but it looks pretty modern.” 

Umino Nakamichi stepped off the shuttle bus and, having got on his tiptoes and stretched himself as tall as he could go, muttered absent-mindedly.

Within the mountains, blanketed under the red autumnal leaves, a cozy two story building peeked out into view. Its roof was sky blue and its wooden walls were an earthy yellow. Its window frames were white and its posts a charred brown. Even putting aside the age of the building, the trendy exterior resembled a Western boarding house more than a traditional Japanese ryokan. Though the building was new, the hot spring itself was old enough, having been popular since the Edo period. 

From the deserted station in Mimasaka district, the mini bus had rumbled along for around 20 minutes. It passed through the rustic hot spring town, and exited the one-way, single-lane highway onto a branch road. The bus finally arrived at its destination just as Umino was starting to grow worried that they were just intently following the winding mountain road without actually heading anywhere.

“What are you talking about? I gave you the brochure.”

Saitozaki Mitsuru looked at Umino, annoyed. He was the sponsor of this graduation trip.

Though the group were all fourth year students in the same seminar, Saitozaki was the leaderly type who always took charge of everything. In addition to his serious personality, he was sporty so professors put a great deal of trust in him due to his strong physique and willingness to take initiative. He’d even thrown himself into making a brochure by hand.

“My bad, Saitozaki. I don’t have any interest whatsoever in hot springs, so that totally slipped my mind.”

Umino was unenthusiastic: hot spring trips are for old geezers and, since this is a graduation trip, there should have been plenty of other options. But, since everyone else had jumped on Saitozaki’s proposal, there was nothing for it but to go along.

“I didn’t give it a good look over, either. Don’t take it the wrong way, Saitozaki; since you picked the place, I figured it was a sure bet.”

Kashii Daichi joked from behind Umino. Kashii was short and plump so his eyes, nose, the contours of his face, his glasses… All of him had soft edges like aged tofu. He was a charming, baby faced man with a knack for putting people at ease.

“Seriously? I appreciate you putting your faith in me but I went to so much effort putting it all together – printing it out and such. The least you could do is give it a once over.” Saitozaki said with a wry smile, his face darkened by sunburn.

“Sorry, sorry.” Still smiling, Kashii put his hands together above his head in supplication. 

“I read it over from beginning to end! Hot springs! Then food! The wagyu beef from Mimasaka sounded so good. Then, after that was… Now that I think about it, the rooms aren’t Japanese-style; they have beds. See, I remember it all perfectly!”

Wajiro Satomi, having taken her time getting off the bus, piped up in her husky voice. She was clad in a knit shirt and wide-leg pants. On top of being short, she wore her hair in a childish bob and, as a result, she appeared younger than she really was so – in town – she’d been repeatedly approached by volunteer truancy officers. 

“I apologise that it doesn’t live up to expectations.”

Perhaps having heard the group's conversation, the mid-30’s bus driver hung his head apologetically. He’d introduced himself as Doi, the proprietor of Nakano Springs back at the station.

“It used to be an old fashioned hot-spring inn like I’m sure you must have been imagining but, five years ago, it had to be rebuilt due to intense deterioration.”

“We’re sorry. We didn’t mean anything like that.”

Before Umino had a chance to apologise, Saitozaki did so in his place. He was just like a teacher taking charge of his class.

“Please, don’t worry about it. Everyone says so. But my prized hot spring still retains an old fashioned atmosphere. When you see it, you’ll probably switch to thinking it’s too old.”

The creases at the corners of Doi’s eyes crinkled as he laughed magnanimously and unlocked the front door. The lights of the entrance hall switched on.

“The proprietress had to return home to give birth so, right now, I’m handling everything by myself. And the kid who works here part-time is on break until the day after tomorrow. Since all the work is being done with a man’s touch, it’s probably less than adequate.”

That explained why the inn was locked up.

“Ah, please look forward to my cooking. Up until I inherited the inn seven years ago, I was training to be a chef at an upscale Japanese restaurant in Kyoto. Before picking you up, I stocked up on good meat and mushrooms in town.”

“We’ll look forward to it. As expected, the food is the true reward of coming to this region.”

Gannosu Ayana cheered as she removed her high-heeled pumps. Her long, white legs protruded from her tight skirt. Perhaps out of car sickness, Ayana had been silent the whole ride over. She must have recovered slightly now that she was off the bus. This beauty – with her long, pink-brown hair worn in gentle curls flowing around her perfectly portioned face – had  made it to the final round of the beauty contest at the university’s school festival. 

A large travelling bag sat upon the floor beside her. Even though the trip was only two nights and three days, it was large enough to fit Ayana herself in – slender as she was – and she’d struggled to move it when they switched vehicles at the station. 

In contrast, Satomi had stuffed everything into an undersized Boston bag which she shouldered as she took off her shoes.

“I’m the opposite. If I’m taking my time relaxing in the hot springs, I’m fine with eating anything.”

Nata Yasuo absent mindedly let loose those blunt words. He was a scrawny man with plain features, buried in a down coat – perhaps he was sensitive to the cold. He looked like he was greeting winter earlier than everyone else.

“You’re always acting like an old geezer, huh.” Umino ribbed him.

“It’s not that I’m an old geezer, I’m just the indoorsy type. Make no mistake, an onsen is the ultimate form of being indoors. Beauty, health, hygiene, stress relief, light exercise, stretching, playing games on your phone – you can do it all from within an onsen.”

Nata prattled on and on, espousing his pet theory.

“Isn’t your definition of ‘indoors’ a little off? Besides, the baths here are open-air.” Saitozaki voiced his doubts in a dubious tone.

“I know that. Since I actually read the pamphlet. It’s a famous open-air bath surrounded by autumn leaves. You can even admire nature from inside the onsen. I’m excited just from seeing the photos!”

Nata stared back at Saitozaki with clear interest. Nata often got heated so no-one else pressed him any further.

There were six people on the graduation trip. Another fourth year, a girl called Matsubara Mai, had planned to join them but she’d suddenly cancelled a week prior. She hadn’t given a detailed explanation why. It seems she’d just sent Saitozaki an email informing him that she was going back to her family home. Between the childlike Satomi and the gorgeous Ayana, she always seemed quite meek so abruptly cancelling via a single email was abnormal. The group was worried that she’d gotten into some serious trouble but none of them had any clue what it could be.

The proprietor handed each guest the key to their rooms as they changed into the slippers at the shoe rack. The guest rooms were on the second floor, each housed two people to a room. Umino was in Room 203 with Saitozaki. Within the guest rooms were two beds. The keys to the rooms’ cylinder locks each had a wooden tag with the room number written on it tied to them, as if the tag was the bearer’s proof of entry. Even though the building was stylish, the keys felt old-fashioned. Moreover, it appeared there wasn’t an autolock. It felt subtly ill fitting.

The two girls, Satomi and Ayana, were in Room 201. Nata and Kashii were in Room 202. Nakano Springs had no more than four rooms in total and the room next to Umino, Room 204, was taken for the night by two men who had been riding the shuttle bus alongside Umino’s group. 

The two men were both roughly 30 years old with similar slender physiques standing at around 1.7 metres tall. Their clothes, however, were markedly different: one wore a fitted suit while the other wore an open-necked shirt. It felt unlikely that two men would go on a hot spring trip together but perhaps it was a recent trend. 

Umino’s group had most likely shared the train with them but he couldn’t recall the other passengers that well. On the bus, the two of them had sat at the very back and whispered to each other in low voices that only they could hear. The racket that the six students were making definitely didn’t help matters. Still, from the desperate expression that occasionally flashed across the man in the open-necked shirt’s face, it seemed like it was an enticing private chat they were holding.

“It’s written that this is the site of a small hokora shrine to the god Chyulhu.”

Having finished writing the group down in the inn’s guest register, Saitozaki struck up a conversation with Doi.

“Ah, I also glanced over that in the brochure. It sounded like a zashiki warashi spirit. Is the shrine nearby?” Satomi, who had taken up a spot beside Saitozaki, asked with a hopeful gaze.

“I’m also interested in that. After the hot spring.” Nata agreed as he carefully placed his key in his waist-pouch.

Since he’s a nervous guy, he walked around with anything important (such as his wallet or his mobile phone) kept within his zipped up waist pouch. Despite his serious personality, Saitozaki was slightly tactless and – in contrast – he’d carelessly shoved his key into his back pocket with the wooden tag still hanging out. That being said, Umino and Kashii both casually slipped their key into their coat pockets, too. 

Unlike Nata and Satomi, Ayana and Kashii both said ‘what’s that?’ with a blank stare as if they’d heard nothing about it. Umino was with them.

“Chyulhu’s shrine is behind the inn. It’s nothing like a Zashiki Warashi, though… If you’re not too tired, I’ll guide you there after you drop off your luggage in your rooms.”

Doi replied amiably as he presented the two men with the guest register.

“Really? Thank you so much.”

“If it’s alright with you, may we also tag along?”

One of the two men butted in, curious. It was the sharp looking one wearing glasses and a suit as if he was on his way to work.

“I’m slightly interested in this god you call Chyulhu.” 

Turning to Saitozaki and the proprietor, the man spoke in a calm, clear voice.

“Oi, Ki... Kasu. At times like this, you need to read the room!”

His companion in the open-necked shirt blurted out. Doi turned to the students, leaving the decision to them.

“That’s absolutely no problem. Isn’t it?”

The first to respond was Satomi. She replied quickly.

“The more the merrier, right?”

Kashii nodded. His smile was wide enough to squint his eyes shut behind his glasses.

“Well, if we went separately, Doi would have to make two trips out, after all.”

Saitozaki, as the leader, concluded and resolved the conversation. Of course, Umino had no objections. He was starting to grow far more interested in these two mysterious men than Chyulhu.

“How about it, Tojo-kun. I presume you’ll come along too. For future reference.”

“Good grief. You can’t just decide these things by yourself…”

The man sounded somewhat disgruntled but Ido puffed out his chest and added ‘the scenery there is also breathtaking. The scale of autumn foliage is even beyond what you can see in Kyoto, after that his interest abruptly started to perk up and he replied with a curious ‘is that so.’ 

“Beyond Kyoto, huh? Certainly, even the autumn leaves just around here are amazing, so my expectations for this view have been set quite high. And since we’ve come all this way… Ah, right, I’m Tojo and this Kasu. Nice to meet you.”

As soon as he’d cheered up, his mood became immediately affable.

Umino and his friends also introduced themselves. In the process, they came to find that Tojo was far more sociable than Kasu even though he’d been the first to butt in. Nevertheless, Kasu spoke courteously with the students and, as a result, that initially promising mysterious atmosphere was – unfortunately – somewhat diluted.

The guest rooms on the second floor had cottage-style wooden interiors with a gap between the two beds. The room was filled with a relaxed atmosphere thanks to its casual interior design, the high ceiling and the ample natural light coming through the veranda’s sliding door.  However, the fact that there was no bathroom inside the room – there was a communal washbasin and toilet on the second floor – spoke to the inn’s history.

“Thank goodness! It’s more comfortable than I thought it would be.”

Glancing around the room, Saitozaki cheerfully voiced his relief.

“It definitely has a good vibe. But you usually find us a good place, Saitozaki – Just like last year. Are you some kind of Trip Guru? You should get a job at a travel agency some time.”

“I’m only passionate about it because it’s a hobby.”

Saitozaki, who was already set to work at a trading company, humbly brushed off the compliment with a wry smile.

As for Umino, he wanted to throw himself down on the soft bed – just like that – and relieve his exhaustion from the long trip. However, he’d already decided to go check out Chyulhu with the others. He wasn’t the kind of egoistic person to split off from the group and do his own thing. He reluctantly returned his key to his pocket and returned to the entrance.

“Well, then. Shall we head out?”

Ten minutes later, everyone had gathered at the entrance. One by one they lined up behind Doi to let him guide them. The usual two were at the very back.

They exited the front door of Nakano Springs and went around the side of the building. Since there were no fences or such demarcating the grounds, the outside of the building blended into the mountains. Having followed the grey, concrete path for a while, they came across a tall wooden fence at the rear of the inn. Steam was rising up from behind the fence and so they figured this was the rear bath. A little further on, where the path split and the fence ended, was the small, wooden hokora shrine.

The shrine was roughly waist-high, clearly old and with cracked supports. The colours it had once been painted had faded and cracked in the heat, leaving its whole body somewhere between charred brown and ash grey. A comparatively new plaque which simply read ‘Chyulhu’ had been attached to the front.

The surrounding grass had been neatly trimmed and a vase full of white camellias, their leaves removed but with their stems still attached, had been placed in front of the shrine. 

Unlike the impression the group had been given, it was the kind of crude shrine you could probably find anywhere. 

“This is Chyulhu-sama’s shrine?”

Ayana must have felt similarly because she asked the question with blatant disappointment.

“There is a small grotto behind the shrine that runs through the earth to another shrine above.”

It seemed that Doi had expected that response because he began explaining like a good guide should. Apparently, there are two shrines to Chyulhu – the other one being at the top of the mountain. Chyulhu usually spends its time in its Heavenly Shrine atop the mountain and only when it appears before humans does it come out of the grotto at the Earthly Shrine and descend to the village below.

Certainly, there was a grotto of a little under 1 metre tall delving into the mountain  hidden behind the shrine, as if the shrine had been built to block it up. However, even just by looking at the entrance, the grotto immediately became too narrow that it was incredibly doubtful a human could pass through it. 

“Now I’ll take you to the Heavenly Shrine. The path there is a little steep so please be careful.”

As Doi had indicated, there was a staircase beyond the shrine. However, just like the path, the stairs were also roughly coated in cement.

“No way! I should have brought along shoes that are easier to walk in.” The pumps-wearing Ayana complained.

She hadn’t brought a change of shoes – On the other hand, just what on Earth could be in that massive travel bag?

“This was clearly covered in Saitozaki’s brochure. You must have only read the bits about the food and the hot springs, Ayana.” Satomi, who was wearing sneakers, pointed out.

“Obviously! If I’d already seen every nook and cranny, I wouldn’t have any reason to actually come here.”

Ayana turned away from Satomi with a pointed frown.

“I had no idea about Chyulhu but why would you bring pumps to a mountain inn in the first place?” Kashii pointed out with a smug expression.

“What? You’ve got nothing to do with pumps, Kashii-kun. Or, perhaps, you want to wear mine?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Kashii, who had merely been stirring the pot, violently ducked his head.

Roughly five minutes later they landed on a similarly paved ascending mountain path. From here, the ascent was far gentler than the stairs up until now. After about 10 minutes of meandering up the mountain, a handmade information board came into view. 

‘Observation Deck and Chyulhu Shrine.’

Directly in front of the tree the information board was hung from, an unpaved road split off to the right. 

“Isn’t it this way?”

It looked like Doi was going to continue onwards without saying anything so Umino called out to him.

“There’s another turn-off up ahead that’s paved like this road. It’ll be easier to walk if we take that one.”

Just as Doi had explained, after around five more metres, there was another fork in the path. A similar information board had been suspended from a branch. Immediately after three metres, the path turned to naked dirt and, once again, became a simple unpaved road. 

“That part, alone, had its paving destroyed in an earthquake three years ago.”

Doi took the turn-off. Though the path up the mountain continued onwards because the paving stopped here, if anything, it felt like the path to the shrine was the main road and the path up the mountain was the side road. In other words, the path that would take you up to around the summit of the mountain had become no different to an animal trail. 

“This is so confusing. Why are there two paths?”

“You can take either one to the shrine but since the previous path has been used since the olden days, it’s a little more precipitous – though, in exchange, it has a great view. This one is an alternate route but, despite being a detour, it’s easier to walk.”

Ah, of course, he was probably concerned about Ayana in her high heels. Said ‘person of concern’, herself, cheerfully chimed in saying  “this way is definitely more fun” while feigning ignorance.

They repeatedly walked up and down the gentle slope for 15 minutes. Suddenly, their field of view which had been blanketed by dense foliage from every side opened up and a flurry of deep red autumn leaves sprang up before their eyes. It was as if a TV had been abruptly switched on in a dark room. 

Among the autumn leaves was a sharp, V-shaped observation deck with a conspicuously rusty iron railing, and beyond that railing was a sheer cliff. About 20 metres down, a river flowed – however the cliff face was dotted with flat protrusions to the bottom of the ravine. Only an alpaca could scale it.

If you put your hands on the railing and look down, a wide panorama unfolds before your eyes. A village nestled among the mountains dyed red by autumn leaves. A dazzling diorama. Even while riding the shuttle bus, Nakano Springs had also been blanketed in autumn leaves. Nevertheless, the view lacked those dynamic undulations and was somehow disappointing. It was like switching from 3D virtual reality to a flat picture…

That’s what Umino thought, anyway. .

He muttered this outright but Saitozaki and Satomi were already around him and everyone was cheering with delight.

Even Ayana, who was sick and tired of the mountain path, bent herself over the railing. Even though – unlike the alternate route they’d been taking – the path right before the observation deck was unpaved, bare dirt, it was as if she’d forgotten all about her feet’s suffering.

Under the circumstances, it would be embarrassing for Umino to say something now.

“Aren’t you moved? By this view, I mean.”

While Umino was hesitating, Tojo called out from behind him.

“I am. But it’s lacking something. Perhaps a bit more stimulation. Enough to satisfy my current boredom.”

“Your boredom?”

“Yeah. I’d thought going to university would somehow be more exciting but, as it turns out, not so much.”

“I heard this was a trip to celebrate graduating your seminar, though. Well, then, I figure you’ve already got a job locked in.”

“Pretty much, and at my father’s company, at that.”

He was neither showing off nor boasting. It would be no exaggeration to say that he didn’t have to deal with the hassle of things like job hunting because, in a sense, his path in life had already been decided since before he’d enrolled. He’d thought that he might find another track he could switch to if he went to university but, in the end, it had passed as nothing more than an ordinary moratorium. 

Nata was going onto postgraduate study but, though they were all on different paths, the other five had all received tentative offers of employment. They just needed to finish their bachelor's theses. As such, this trip was essentially a farewell party. Even though Kashii hadn’t completed enough credits to graduate.

“So, then, you’re living a life lacking in stimulation in exchange for stability. When I was in university, I went through all kinds of troubles. Well, not that that’s changed now. So, on the contrary, I’m jealous of you.”

Tojo wasn’t being snide. Though, on the other hand, it didn’t seem like he was genuinely envious of Umino.

“So, then, Chyulhu-sama’s Heavenly Shrine is over there.”

Sensing the appropriate time had come, Doi caught the group’s attention.

Chyulhu’s shrine was opposite and across from the observation deck, in other words, it had been built facing the grand panorama. The Heavenly Shrine was a size bigger than the Earthly Shrine below and built out of stone so, even though it had been built in the same shoddy style, the moss covered sections gave it a sense of antiquity. The same kind of Camellias had been offered here too.

Just like the wooden shrine below, the mouth of a cavern opened up with the stone shrine’s depths. This one seemed large and deep enough to accept even a considerable tall person, however it was impossible to see within the murky depths of the grotto.

“Is this cavern really connected to the shrine below?” Nata asked dubiously.

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“Can we go in?” 

In contrast, Kashii questioned Doi with a friendly grin. He looked amped up to dive right in as soon as he got the green light.

“My deepest apologies but I must ask that you refrain. You’ll upset Chyulhu-sama.” Doi frantically pleaded with Kashii. Since he was a student, Doi probably thought Kashii was apt to get up to mischief.  “Even though I’ve been told that it’s connected to the Earthly Shrine below, this cavern  also abruptly narrows roughly ten metres in so it’s impossible to go through. Bats come and go from the cavern so it’s clear that it’s quite deep but, as for what is going on inside, I have no clue.”

“What the heck? So that’s a no-go, then…”

Kashii’s shoulders sagged blatantly.

“So Chyulhu travels to and from this cavern. Why’s that?” Kasu asked calmly. He was wearing the same form-fitting suit he’d been wearing on the bus.

“It seems that Chyulhu-sama was originally a god of a foreign country. For some reason we don’t know, it came here. It is said that it appears at the Earthly Shrine in the form of a child and descends to the village below, but a pair of children returns.”

“A pair?”

“Right. When it comes back from the village, it brings along a human soul.”

“I’ve heard that Zashiki Warashi brings fortune to the homes they inhabit but Chyulhu abducts human souls? How creepy. It’s just like the Grim Reaper!”

“Not quite. Chyulhu-sama only takes the sick and those who have reached the end of their lifespan. Supposedly, the soul of the dead is returned to the form of a child and taken by Chyulhu-sama. There is a story from the Taishou period: people saw two children ascending the mountain at dusk and, just as they feared, they found that a young man had lost his life in a workshop accident. And when they found the body, there were petals of camellias – which were out of season – scattered all around the young man.”

“So I guess it’s like a messenger from the other side?” Tojo abruptly interjected having gotten a similar impression as the image of the Amitabha Tathagata coming to this world to welcome the dead in Buddhist Countries.

“But you could also interpret that as Chyulhu intentionally causing fatal accidents in order to take those souls, right? In any case, as a foreign god living all alone in these mountains, I’m sure it must be lonely.”

“That isn’t the case.” Doi refused firmly but then quietly amended a ‘probably.’ “Chyulhu-sama’s shrine is a tremendous power spot and we’ve even received favourable reviews of it from our guests. There’s definitely no way it’s something so wicked.”

The image of the Amitabha Buddhas with a shining halo around them had immediately switched to a pitch-black emissary of Hell. He glanced at Tojo who gave a slight smile.

“In that case, though this is now an observation deck, it was originally Chyulhu’s home, huh.” Kasu said, paying no mind to his partner’s frivolous talk.

“Yes. In ancient times, Chyulhu-sama had this view all to itself.”

“That must’ve been nice.” Satomi said while looking back out at the panoramic view. “We should come back here tomorrow, too. Perhaps we might even meet Chyulhu-sama. Chyulhu-sama is a cute little boy, isn’t he?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

Doi hadn’t finished speaking but, once again, Tojo piped up.

“Since it’s a foreign god that washed up on our shores, who knows what kind of monster its real form looks like? It has a body that can move through this narrow cavern, after all. Perhaps it looks like an octopus. Doi also said it only takes the form of a child when it appears at the Earthly Shrine below. Who knows what it’ll look like up here.”

“No way!”

Upon hearing the grinning Tojo’s words, Satomi became genuinely frightened.

“Tojo-kun.” Kasu rebuked him coolly then turned to Satomi and gently apologised. “Sorry, sorry. We didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Since this place is exposed to the wind, even Chyulhu probably spends all his time holed up in his cavern.” Umino unconsciously muttered.

“You always know how to put a damper on things, Umino.” Nata immediately glared at Umino.

“He’s the same as Tojo.” This was Kashii. Tojo didn’t get angry, he paid no mind to the comment, grinning all the while.

“Don’t say that. You’re always like this, Umino.” Saitozaki spoke as if he fully understood everything. 

It was just a casual comment but everyone had piled on Umino. Was he really the one at fault here? While harboring these unreasonable thoughts, Umino voiced his objection.

“Well, that’s because we haven’t been told the layout of the area, yet.”

“I see. You’re also trying to separate the facts from the fiction, Umino-kun. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.” Tojo brought his face close and whispered into Umino’s ear. This was the most unreasonable part of all.

“We’ll take the shrine path back to the fork in the road from a little while ago. That road is a little more precipitous but the view you get when walking down the valley side is beyond compare. There’s one viewing spot along the way that gives you an even better view than from here.”

The group had arrived at the south side of the V-shaped observation deck but the shrine path stretched out from the north side of the platform and connected up to the path in front of the hokora. Naturally, Ayana refused, saying ‘I don’t wanna.’ Even from the viewing platform, you could see the narrow, precipitous, unpaved path. Nevertheless, the other seven of them couldn’t resist their desire to see this view beyond what they’d seen already and they returned back down the shrine path. There was nothing else for it so Doi escorted Ayana back. 

The shrine path was unpaved and incredibly bumpy but not enough to cause worry and it could be traversed in ordinary shoes. The viewing point that Doi had talked up (he’d even gone out of his way to set up a post with a drawing of an eye with long eyelashes on it) from which Umino and the rest were able to see the edge of the mountain and the deep-red iron bridge of the railway they had ridden on also added a sense of elegance to the journey and made the experience thoroughly satisfying.

However, you can’t have light without shadow. There was one particular spot where trouble arose. Midway through, they had to cross a crude rope bridge. The bridge stretched over a ravine where spring water ran down the slope of the mountainside and flowed into the valley below, however the gaps between the wooden planks were large and you could see right through them. Perhaps as a result, the bridge felt even higher up than it actually was.

Nevertheless, it was only a mere five metres long and so most of the group – Umino, his friends and the aforementioned two men – were able to nimbly cross. However, there was one person whose legs couldn’t stop trembling.

“Hey, don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights or something, you Pussy. Even though you’re a man…” Umino shouted to Saitozaki who’d faltered right in front of the bridge.

Umino hadn’t known that Saitozaki had a fear of heights. Consider this revenge for earlier.

“There’s no difference between men and women when it comes to phobias! What era do you think this is?!” With his legs still frozen in place, Saitozaki glared back at Umino.

“Well, then, why don’t you head back? If you hurry, you might be able to catch up to Gannosu.”

“Don’t underestimate me!”

Saitozaki’s competitive side appeared. Perhaps incensed by Umino’s tawdry provocations, he managed to push himself to cross half of the bridge. However, he accidentally glanced down and pulled the brakes.

“You can do it, Saitozaki-kun! The goal is just a little further.” Satomi cheered him on while tightly gripping the rope in front of her. However, since that rope was connected to the bridge, every time Satomi put force on it, it caused the wooden planks to shake slightly.

“You can stop pushing yourself and turn back, you know? There’s absolutely no shame in that. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.” Nata called out in a worried voice, though he’d missed the mark slightly with his choice of saying.

“You’re damned if you advance. Damned if you retreat.” Kashii spouted what sounded like the lines of a character in a period piece. Umino thought that both of them were being counterproductive. 

“I am a man. Rather than turning back after having come this far, I should push on to the end.” However, it seems that Saitozaki didn’t have the luxury to scrutinise the finer details of the Japanese language. Even though it contradicted what he’d said about men and women only a short while ago, once Saitozaki had rekindled his motivation and pushed through to the other side, a cheer went up.

“You’re amazing! Saitozaki!” Nata, who wasn’t the type to thoughtlessly praise others, was genuinely impressed. Tojo and Kasu both gave Saitozaki a pleasant round of applause.

Even once they’d arrived at the point where the path up the mountain had diverged, Ayana and Doi weren’t there. After around a minute the two of them appeared together. It seemed that Umino’s group had been faster, even with all the time spent going ‘waah!’ and ‘kyaaa!’ at the lookout spot and all the time Saitozaki spent going ‘waah!’ and ‘kyaa!’ on the bridge. Wasn’t the path only ten minutes long, walking normally?

“Did something happen?” Seeing the peculiar sense of camaraderie among the shrine path group up close, Ayana interrogated them – her suspicion flaring.

“The scenery was pretty amazing but Saitozaki was even more amazing.” Satomi, slightly giddy, poked fun at him. 

“Oi, oi. Give me a break.” Saitozaki said while scratching his head.

Perhaps having made various assumptions, Ayana just chuckled.

“Ah, that’s right. I heard about one more sightseeing spot from Doi-san. Let’s all go there together, tomorrow!”

***

The crimson autumn leaves that loomed over the wooden fence melted away in the gloomy twilight sky. The smell of sulphur permeated the air of the cloudy open-air bath. As a result of the sulphur, the bathers skin immediately felt like it was actually becoming loose. 

Hot springs are great… Feeling just like Nata, Umino submerged himself in the bath alone.

Saitozaki would be coming later, upon returning to the room he shared with Umino, had thrown himself on the bed and started playing with his smartphone. When Umino bumped into Tojo in the second floor hallway, he’d received some mysterious banter. ‘You’re heading straight to the hot spring, huh? You’re unexpectedly proactive.’ It didn’t seem like Tojo was trying to pick a fight but it had been slightly bothering Umino ever since.

All the onsen at Nakano Springs were outdoors; there was one small bathtub in the arbour with only a roof attached and there were two large, weatherbeaten open-air baths.  Beyond that there was a washing station with an awning above it and an indoor dressing room with a shower cubicle in its corner; everything was arranged haphazardly. Even though the building was recently renovated, it seems that the onsen area was untouched – the washing station didn’t even have showers, only faucets.

Umino could hear two girls squealing in the woman’s bath next door. It seemed like the high pitched shrieks were mainly coming from Satomi, though.

Putting aside Kashii, the hot spring loving Nata should be coming soon. In that case, this was the only time he could monopolise the bath. He was going to make the most of it.

When he pushed his legs forward and, once again, sank into the bath, he got the sense that someone was rustling around on the other side of the fence. There was the sound of footsteps on the concrete path. Furthermore, it was a dull sound like they were dragging their feet. If that was all of it, he probably wouldn’t have cared but the footsteps outside the wooden fence came and went – once, twice, three times.

Could it be a peeping tom? Obviously they wouldn’t be peeping on Umino but on the girls next door.

Umino hurriedly stood up and walked over to the wooden fence at the far side of the hot spring. The fence was roughly two metres high so he had to stand on one of the garden stones in order to take a peek at the outside.

However, the footsteps he’d been hearing up til now suddenly stopped and the gloomy mountain path became as silent as the grave. Thereupon, Umino clearly spotted Chyulhu’s shrine at the end of the path. 

At the same time, Umino realised that this was the path to the shrine. This was the exact same path they’d taken that afternoon when they’d seen the steam rising from the other side of the wooden fence. 

The gloomy path to the shrine. The cold wind blew and a chill ran across his flesh.

Umino hurriedly returned to the bath. He listened carefully but the footsteps didn’t resume. Only the sound of the trees swinging in the mountain wind reached his eardrums.

“Come on, now. Seriously?” 

Just as he muttered those words to himself, the door opened with a clatter. He swung around in surprise to see Nata entering with Kashii in tow. Nata sunk into the water, a towel wrapped around his head.

“What’s the matter? You look spooked.” He asked in a carefree tone.

“It’s nothing.”

“Were you peeping? You’re unexpectedly daring, aren’t you!” Kashii plopped into the bath, spraying water everywhere, and loudly mocked Umino.

“Like hell I was, Dumbass.”

Unlike the wooden fence at the edge of the path to the Earthly Shrine, the divider for the women’s bath was a towering, white plaster wall of around three metres. Without a hint of a foothold, the wall seemed to absolutely forbid peeking at all costs.

“Huh, peeping?” 

Perhaps having caught Kashii’s shouting, the boys heard an anxious voice from the women’s bath.

“It’s nothing. Just one of Kashii’s fantasies.” Umino yelled back.

“Wait a minute! That’s not true! The imperial senate is disseminating disinformation to you!”

As soon as Kashii finished throwing his excuses across the plaster wall, he turned to Umino and demanded an explanation.

“You were way too loud when you blurted that crap out. I was just acting in self-defence.”

Thereupon Umino noticed that the wooden fence was directly opposite from the women’s bath. In other words, no matter how much you milled around the fence, you wouldn’t be able to peep into the women’s bath. So, then, were those footsteps just someone passing by? However, what were they hurriedly going back and forth for?

There was no mistaking what Umino had heard. …Suddenly, he recalled Chyulhu’s legend.

It was a foreign god who appeared at the shrine to take away human souls. Perhaps, tonight, it had brought someone back with it? No way, no way. Umino vigorously shook his head.

It was probably just Doi leaving an offering. It seemed like he genuinely believed in Chyulhu. Nevertheless… The footsteps were going back and forth far more than that would take. Leaving an offering should have only taken a single round trip.

“What’s the matter?” Perhaps due to how stiff Umino’s expression had become, this time Nata sounded worried.

“You saw Chyulhu, didn’t you? Wow, Umino, I never knew you were a scaredy-cat.” 

Since Kashii had clearly not learned his lesson about mocking him, Umino drew a breath…

“Don’t do it, Kashii! You’re even using a drone?!”

And yelled out once again.

“Well, then. I’m getting out first. Dinner is from seven, after all.”

After checking with the other two, Umino headed to the dressing room. Even Kashii was clearly at a loss for words over how Nata sent droplets flying from his head and splashing all over the washing area; for a self-proclaimed lover of hot springs, Nata’s manners were atrocious. When he turned his head, Umino could spot a red birthmark on his shoulder.

If Nata was the owner of those footsteps, could he have bumped it when he’d had to hurriedly return from the shrine path back then?

 However, the timing to return to the entrance and then get to the open air bath was far too tight. In that case, had he simply bumped it somewhere unrelated?

When Umino returned to his room, Saitozaki was lying on his bed with his earbuds plugged into his smartphone.

“Welcome back. How was the water?”

He turned in to look at Umino at the sound of the door shutting. Umino had assumed Saitozaki was listening to music, but he’d been playing an online game. 

“Aah, it was great. You should have taken a dip, rather than playing games. Aren’t you the one who brought us here?”

“It’s not in my nature to get in the bath while there’s still sun out.”

Saitozaki said it with a straight face so it seems he really meant it. He was a weirdly earnest guy.

“The sun already set ages ago!”

“I know. But I like to take a long bath. There’s no way I could have a leisurely soak and still make it in time for dinner so I’ll head in after I eat.”

The clock read 6:20pm. There was still a half hour to go. If that’s the case, Umino wanted to ask why Saitozaki had picked an inn that had nothing but hot springs, however he was sure Saitozaki would just respond with an honour-student-like answer such as ‘I thought you would all enjoy it’ or something.

“You’re a hard ass, I get it. Even if you play games on your phone. ”

Saitozaki didn’t seem like the type to be interested in things like videogames, so Umino voiced his surprise.

“This fishing rod is expensive but it’s also the current meta.” Saitozaki’s answer was clear. Umino was too scared to ask how much the fishing rod cost.

“Sounds good.” Umino said vaguely, just to show he was listening, and lay on his bed.

That’s when he noticed the petals by his pillow. White petals with a faint pink border. Around a dozen or so white petals.

“Hey!” He unconsciously let out a shout.

“What’s wrong? You raised your voice.”  Presumably with his earbuds still in, Saitozaki made a perplexed expression.

“This flower.” Umino replied.

“Hm? Those are camellia petals, aren’t they?” Saitozaki said.

“Did you bring these here?”

“No, I had no idea they were there.” Saitozaki shook his head.

“They weren’t here when I went to the bath, though.” 

“Could they have blown in when the window was opened? Putting that aside, there was no reason to lose your head over that.”

Saitozaki tilted his head to show he didn’t understand. Certainly, the sliding door to the veranda had been cracked open to ventilate the room.

“But–” Umino said but then shut his mouth.

This was the same flower offered at Chyulhu’s shrine. That had apparently been scattered around the young man who died in that accident. But if he pointed that out, Saitozaki would think he’s scared of Chyulhu. Umino wanted to avoid that.

But could the petals really have fallen on his pillow so conveniently?

They said that Chyulhu beckons… the souls of the dead.

In order to steal people’s souls, Chyulhu intentionally causes accidents. He was probably joking but Tojo had said those ominous words. Perhaps Chyulhu had grown lonely and was demanding a sacrifice.

Once seven came, Umino and Saitozaki headed to the dining room downstairs. Everyone was present. Tojo and Kasu were also present, sitting together at a separate table. Doi was briskly carting over trays of food from that side of the room. 

At the very least, no-one’s dead yet… Umino relaxed.

Well then, what the hell was the point of those petals? Or else, could they be hinting at something yet to come?

Though Umino was aware he was being served dishes like Mimasaka Wagyu Sukiyaki hotpot and stir fry one after another, his unease meant that even the flavour of Doi’s cooking – even having trained in an upscale Japanese restaurant in Kyoto – failed to register. Everyone else was scarfing the food down going ‘so good, so good!’

Even after dinner, when Umino was lying in bed, he continued to absentmindedly think about it.

Saitozaki had gone to the hot springs and so, right now, he was alone. It should have been the perfect environment for reflection, however – perhaps because the walls were thin – he could hear the indistinct noise of his neighbours chatting. 

A draft came from the window he’d left open. He got up from bed and closed the window. He looked out into the pitch-black void outside. And hurriedly shut the curtains.

There were two things he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Who had left the petals by his pillow?

Suppose that Chyulhu exists, the petals were left by Umino’s own pillow. In other words, the one who would be going back with Chyulhu was Umino himself. Perhaps his body will be cold by tomorrow. 

That’s ridiculous! This was obviously a prank. But whose prank was it, then? That’s the other problem. If that’s the case, the only one who could have been in the room while Umino was in the bath was Saitozaki. But he was way too obvious to be the culprit. If he was going to feign ignorance, there were far better ways to do so. Even if he’d just gone to the bath afterwards, he’d open up the possibility of another culprit.

In the first place, why would Saitozaki do something like this?

Saitozaki was a straightforward person. Umino couldn’t imagine him pulling such a roundabout practical joke. If it was Umino himself, well, he’d probably do something like that but… However, at that moment, Umino recalled something from that afternoon. Could Saitozaki be holding a grudge over Umino mocking his acrophobia?

But if it wasn’t Saitozaki, did that mean this was a sign that Chyulhu was going to claim another soul like he’d thought? He was going in circles.

The souls of the dead… Suddenly, Matsubara Mai’s face sprung to mind. The girl who suddenly dropped out of the trip one week prior. He considered whether Mei had turned up but she would have contacted if she was coming and the entrance – which was earlier on the path than the shrine – was open so it’s unlikely she could have gotten lost. 

If Umino was remembering correctly, Mei had returned to her home in Tottori… And Tottori prefecture was right next to Okayama, where Mimasaka is located.

“Saitozaki isn’t here, huh.”

Satomi entered the room after knocking and looked around. She was wearing a sexless jersey.

“He went to the baths. Though, he’s been there a while now, huh…”

“Well, then, it’s fine even if it’s just you, Umino-kun. Wanna play ping pong? We’re hanging out in the rec centre downstairs.”

 “What the hell, Wajiro? ‘Even if it’s just you…’ What am I, chopped liver?”

“Well, that’s because you suck at ping pong.”

Umino objected saying that he was under the impression Satomi was also dogshit at the game.

“That’s why I wanted someone who’s actually good! I need a partner.” She fired back, turning a blind eye to her own faults.

There was no helping it, so Umino headed down to the rec centre where Nata and Ayana were already lying in wait. Ayana was wearing a yukata with a conspicuous slit hem that radiated sex appeal.

“Where’s Kashii?”

Kashii looked like he’d be uninterested in sport since he was short and squat but he was actually insanely good at ping pong. Apparently his parents had been taking him to ping pong school ever since he was a kid. With his agile movements that could only be mistaken for a machine’s, his smashes always landed. 

“He said he got heat fatigue from the bath so he’s not feeling well.” Nata explained as they entered the room. Now that he mentioned it, Umino recalled that the talkative Kashii had grown quiet around when he left the bath.

“Forget about Kashii, you’re facing us right now.” The unnecessarily fired-up Satomi declared and the game of doubles between her and Umino against Ayana and Nata began. However, in the end, they were a pair of amateurs and they were soundly beaten. It’s not that Nata or Ayana were particularly skilled, their side was just overwhelmingly unskilled. Mid-game, the ping pong ball rolled off the table and got crushed under Umino’s foot. Luckily no-one noticed and he unconsciously slipped the crushed ball into his pant’s pocket. 

Once the infernal two-match bog had spat out Umino and Satomi, the jersey-clad Saitozaki poked his head in. He’d wrapped up his leisurely bath and his face was flushed boiled-octopus red.

“So you’ve finally shown up. Hey, Saitozaki, switch with me. I’m so bad that Wajiro has turned into a super-pissed-off Kanrin Maru warship.”

“What, am I meant to be Admiral Kimura Kaishu now?” Satomi quipped aggressively but, in the next moment, her language turned cloying. “Well, then. Won’t you please help me out, Saitozaki-kun?”

Nata covered his face with his racket and shot an amused glance in Umino’s direction. It was blatantly obvious to everyone that Satomi liked Saitozaki. Everyone but the two people themselves.

Be that as it may, Saitozaki was dating Ayana. It must have been almost half a year now, right? They hid it well.

From Gannosu’s calm expression, she’s clearly looking down on the tension Satomi is feeling. What a nasty woman. Nevertheless, Umino had also dated Ayana previously without realising her true character. Moreover, he’d only learnt how devilish she was when she casually dumped him after only two months. It was so incredibly pathetic. Because of that stain, he couldn’t bring himself to interfere with their love triangle.

In any case, the red hot rally between Team Saitozaki-Wanjiro and Team Gannosu-Nata had begun.

“Looks pretty fun, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, is this the fun part, then?”

Eventually, Tojo and Kasu joined the gallery, having completed their bath. And before long Doi finished cleaning up after dinner and joined, too. Moreover, not only did Doi spectate but he took part in the match, too.

“In the end, Kashii-kun never showed up.” Satomi muttered as she put the balls away after their party (read: fierce competition) was over. In the end, it was the childish Doi’s complete victory. While the person in question tried to be humble about it, there was no mistaking that he had been a frequent visitor of ping pong parlours while he was training in Kyoto. He was practically invincible. Though, if Kashii was there, he might have given Doi a run for his money.

“He’s probably still dizzy from the hot spring. I’ll check on him when I head back.” Nata said, anxiously.  He’d played almost ten games despite being fragile so his face was flushed red.

“But, after that, I’m going back in the hot spring. I’m drenched in sweat.”

Indeed, Nata loved hot springs. In fact, he’d probably only pushed himself so hard while playing ping pong in order to enjoy the hot spring even more. 

Perhaps Chyulhu had abducted Kashii. That he hadn’t come to play ping pong was an omen of that. A flash of unease ran through the back of Umino’s mind but he felt that guy wasn’t the type to get grabbed. Well, then. Does that mean Chyulhu’s going to take me like I thought?

That night, Umino didn’t sleep a wink.

***

The next morning, Kashii was still alive. It’s not like he believed in Chyulhu but Umino was relieved, anyway. 

“Eh, everyone but me? Even Doi-san? If that’s the case, I would have also dropped everything and rushed to join in – And it was ping pong, to boot!” Kashii said as he gobbled up breakfast with a nonchalant expression. Apparently, he really had gotten sick from the hot spring the previous night. To be precise, it seems his skin had reacted badly to the water quality and had broken out in a bad itch.

“What a shame, even though you’ve come to such a fancy onsen.” Satomi offered her sympathy.

“Seriously, you’re such a wasteful bastard, Kashii.” Nata added with selfish indignance. 

Obviously, Umino himself was still alive. Though he’d barely gotten any sleep. Doi and the usual two mystery men were also fine. Umino unconsciously thanked god.

The guests were served an extravagant breakfast of mushroom hotpot and grilled river fish. Thanks to his relief, unlike the previous night, Umino was able to taste today’s breakfast. Doi was truly talented.

Shortly after breakfast, Doi guided the group to the riverbank at the foot of the mountain. This was the other sightseeing spot he’d mentioned the day prior. The bus trip down the mountain felt around five minutes long. It was probably downstream of the river they’d seen from the observation deck. A river ran gently through the three metre-wide channel.

It didn’t seem to be a historic landmark or a mystic power spot. There was nothing around besides the pebbles and boulders scattered randomly across the riverbed. However, the reason Doi had brought them to the river with overflowing confidence was because a great number of autumn leaves were leisurely drifting down the river upstream.

The rain during the night had wet the stones and they glimmered brilliantly in the sunlight. Amidst these stones that sparkled like stars, the group watched the leaves spinning around and around as they passed in front of them. The phrase “I see within my mind’s eye, the autumn leaves, picturesque as they flow down the Tatsuta River” unconsciously popped into Umino’s mind. 

“Wow!!” Satomi cheered. Ayana, who was struggling to walk uphill in her high heels, also stopped in her tracks and stared fixedly. 

The shutter of Nata’s smartphone camera repeatedly snapped shut. Tojo also silently shot a video tracking the autumn leaves.

“There’s a dam beyond this point so this is as far as the leaves can drift. This place isn’t recorded in the guidebooks, I only tell guests about it.” Doi added excitedly upon seeing his guests' reactions. It was easy to see why he’d wanted to brag.

“In private, I call it the Bloody Maple River.”

That was his final addendum.

The scenery had, thankfully, successfully driven all thoughts about Chyulhu from Umino’s mind and, soon enough, it was time for lunch. As a service for staying more than a single night, the guests were treated to grilled offal yakiudon loaded with mushrooms. Apparently the offal yakiudon was a specialty of the region. It was delicious, of course.

After lunch, Umino made a trip to the Earthly Shrine alone. Two of the camellias offered yesterday had been plucked from their stems. Without its petals, the yellow stamen was pitifully bare. With a start, he suddenly noticed that a single petal had fallen by his feet. 

It was a trivial thing. Someone had plucked the flowers clean. If this was Chyulhu’s doing, it wouldn’t have done such a shoddy job like leaving behind a petal.  Since it had turned to dusk, they must have overlooked it in the dark. That they’d made a mistake means this was definitely the work of a human.

While this came as a relief, at the same time Umino seethed with anger that someone had pulled this prank. 

No, he couldn’t let himself be swallowed up by his anger… In order to temporarily calm down, he made his way to the hot spring. He was still breathing heavily but, despite choking on the sulfur, he was thankfully able to cool his head enough to think.

“Come to think of it, did you go to the bathroom while I was in the bath yesterday?” Umino asked Saitozaki, who was engrossed in his phone game, once he returned to the room.

“Uhh, did I?” Saitozaki’s hand froze in the middle of paying for a microtransaction as he thought for a moment, and then he admitted: “I did, once. Why do you want to know?”

“No reason in particular, don’t worry about it.”

“You’re a weird guy, you know that? …Ah, right. I just remembered. I need to take a stroll.”

After shooting Umino one or two dubious looks, Saitozaki exited the room. He’d sounded fired up for some reason so he was probably going for a couple’s stroll with Ayana. Well, that’s got nothing to do with me any more, Umino thought. All I want is for the two of them to be happy. Umino flopped down on his bed.

Let’s turn our thinking around. If the petals were a person’s doing, there’s nothing to get upset about. 

The footsteps out the front of the shrine. There wasn’t enough time for Nata and Kashii to have made them and then immediately get into the bath. And that goes for Ayana and such in the women’s bath, too. So that indicated it was Saitozaki but…

Umino figured he’d nap off the exhaustion of the trip and, before he knew it, it was raining outside. Looking at the clock beside his pillow, it was 3:10pm. Even though the weather forecast hadn’t predicted rain... Saitozaki wasn’t back yet, either.

Umino could feel something prodding his rear and, reaching into his pants pocket, he found that he was still carrying the ping pong ball from the previous night. Speaking of ping pong, those two mystery men had only watched, they never joined in the match…

At that moment, an idea flashed through Umino’s mind. Someone capable of ducking into the room when Saitozaki went to the bathroom. Someone capable of knowing when Umino was going to be in the bath. 

Suddenly, Umino bolted upright and dashed downstairs. In the lounge area, Tojo and Kasu had sunken into massage chairs and were sharing a friendly chat.

Umino stood in front of Tojo.

“Tojo-san. This was your prank, wasn’t it?”

Tojo looked at the petals from beside Umino’s pillow. And then he broke out into the widest, beaming grin.

“Bullseye.” He nodded. “Did you have fun?”

2

I’d won a three days, two nights trip to a hot spring inn from the raffle in the shopping centre. Since opportunities like this rarely popped up, if I invited Kisarazu Yuuya with me, he’d be sure to have the time seeing as he’d just resolved an incredibly difficult case. Which is why we’d come along to the onsen in Mimasaka. As far as writers of mystery novels go, I – Kouzuki Sanetomo – may as well have been a complete nobody but, even so, it’d be a problem if people recognised me (and, if they didn’t, it would just be plain sad) I suggested that we go under fake names. 

“Since we’re just two jokers, why don’t we call ourselves Tojo and Kasu?” I proposed. “Sure, whatever.” Kisarazu agreed flatly. Now that I mention it, that reminds me. Before, when we were riding the shinkansen, Kisarazu had been flooded with questions from a group of highschool girls on a field trip because he’d introduced himself as a detective. When I teased him saying that ‘it’s not every day you get to be surrounded by highschool girls that aren’t being suspected of murder’, he got fed up and told me straight up that he wished I would take his place. So I figure that’s why he readily agreed to an ‘undercover trip’ this time.

The trip from the station was about twenty minutes on the shuttle bus. Even though the station was already in the mountains, the inn we were heading to seemed smack dab in the heart of it. 

The two of us were sharing a room. Previously, Kisarazu had offered to pay extra to get himself another room but they were all booked out and we were refused. Since I guess this inn is unexpectedly popular, six students rode the shuttle bus alongside us. They were probably the ones who’d booked out all the other rooms. If I had heard them right, they were on a graduation trip or something.

Once we arrived at the inn, to my surprise, Kisarazu practically jumped at the topic of Chyulhu. As Kisarazu’s Watson, this sort of thing is meant to be my job but… Could he have caught the scent of a case?

Anyway I played along with their conversation and then we received our two keys to room 204. They each had a pentagonal wooden charm attached to them like the kinds you find at tourist traps. You know the ones, kind of like the wooden ema plaques at shrines but far narrower and way smaller. We entered the high-ceilinged guest room and I peered out the veranda, a sea of autumn leaves entered my view. The proprietor wasn’t lying; this view was even better than Kyoto.

“I didn’t know you were a big fan of things like Zashiki Warashi.” I prodded.

“The homepage for this inn talked about it so I figured I’d take a look around but I couldn’t find a trace of the myth of Chyulhu on any other websites. At least, not prior to 10 years ago.” He said nonchalantly.

“So, what are you saying?”

“There are plenty of folktales about spirits like the Zashiki Warashi but not around here. Those stories are from places closer to Setouchi.”

“So it’s wrapped up in a crime, then?”

Was this the work of his Great Detective’s sixth-sense for getting involved in cases? I leaned into Kisarazu.

“That’s not it. It’s just a bunch of nonsense. There’s a plaque saying it’s an occult ‘power spot’, it’s nothing more than a scam to lure in guests. A tourist trap. Chyulhu is even a pun on the name Nakano Hotsprings. Chyu is just the onyomi alternate reading of the Japanese word ‘Naka’, after all. Just like those imposing white towers that seemed to spring up overnight at Ichiya Castle. So, contrary to appearances, I was curious about the lengths they’d gone to in making the legend up.”

“You’re a wicked guy, you know that? And yet, you joined in under the pretense that you were genuinely interested.”

As expected of a Great Detective, he hadn’t given the slightest hint of his nefarious intentions.

“We went to the trouble of going on this trip. We might as well have a little excitement.”

In the end, Chyulhu’s shrine was more interesting than expected. The shrine itself was just an old curio that had either been thrown out by some council somewhere or found lying around but the cavern that connected two spots above and below left me feeling uneasy. It was amusing to watch students respond genuinely to the proprietor’s earnest narration. I looked over to see what Kisarazu was thinking, but his expression gave nothing away.

Nevertheless, the landscape of autumn leaves spread out in front of the observation deck was the real deal, just seeing that made the whole day worthwhile. The dynamism of the scene was on a whole other level from the wabisabi of the old capital. I could see why the proprietor talked it up.

At that time, only the long-haired student called Umino looked unimpressed. He wasn’t able to stop his dissatisfied expression from screaming ‘I’m bored.’ Despite the fact, even Gannosu Ayana, who’d spent the entire walk over complaining on-and-on about her pumps, was moved by the scene.

If anything, the more he saw the other students enjoying themselves, the more he projected stubbornness. It had the same feeling as when you can’t get drunk when you go out drinking because you were already drunk when you left the house. It’s not that he was being left out, he wasn’t able to get into the mood of the place.

I was also like this once so I couldn’t just ignore it. Moreover since it seemed like Kisarazu was bored, I was also starting to get bored. I wasn’t mature enough to enjoy hot springs.

I got back to the inn and entered the hall right as Umino was heading to the onsen. 

After he entered the bathing area, I peeked into the dressing room but it looked like there was only one person’s clothes in the wicker basket. After that, I peeked into the women’s bath. Two girls were bathing in the open air bath. I could faintly hear their chatter. 

I hurried outside and around to the back of the inn. When I plucked the petals of the camellias out the front of Chyulhu’s shrine and noisily retraced my steps over and over again, he reacted just as I’d expected.

I heard him splish-splashing his way through the water as he drew closer so I hurriedly hid myself in the grotto behind the shrine. It was dusk so there wasn’t any light around and, as long as I held my breath, he wouldn’t be able to see me from over there. 

Don’t get it twisted, if Chyulhu’s shrine was the real deal, I would never have done something like plucking the flowers offered to it or hiding in the cave behind its shrine, no matter what. I wasn’t that insensitive. But since a Great Detective I trust implicitly decided it was a fake, there was nothing stopping me.

After a short while, I heard Umino give up and return to the waters. I crept back to room 204 and kept an eye on the room next door. 

“What are you up to?” Kisarazu, who was relaxing in the room, asked. It seemed he had noticed I was scheming something, but – for the moment – he had no intention of criticising me.

Finally, I heard the sound of Saitozaki opening the door to his room and heading to the bathroom. Sure enough, he hadn’t locked his door. 

Now, then. Which of these beds is Umino’s… I could easily determine that based on the luggage next to the beds.

I left several plucked camellia petals by his pillow.

And when I hurried back to room 204, I heard Saitozaki return from the bathroom.

***

After lunch, I stepped out of my room to take a bath in the onsen only to hear a voice from the room at the very back of the hall. It was the room of the two girls. It was around 2:30pm at this point. 

“Aren’t you heading to the hot spring?”

Wajiro Satomi took a step out the open door and into the hallway, she turned her head back and called out. Her clothes, a jersey and a bath towel, would usually be too casual but – on the contrary – they fit perfectly for a hot spring inn.

“Sorry, I’m a little tired.”

I heard Ayana’s voice from within the room. 

“But it’s when you feel tired, you’re supposed to go to the hot spring.”

“My head is heavy and I think I’m coming down with a cold, so I’m going to take a quick nap.”

“Issat so? Right, then, I’ll also give it a miss.”

It’d be bad if I got caught eavesdropping, so I headed down the stairs before they noticed I was here.  A freshly-bathed Umino with his long hair still drying was heading up in my place. I put on a poker face and took a peek at him as we passed each other; to my surprise, he was wearing a relieved expression. 

“Don’t mess with the youngsters too much.” Kisarazu advised me from the opposite side of the bath as we submerged ourselves in the hot water.

“We went to the trouble of going on this trip. We might as well have a little excitement.” I parroted Kisarazu’s own words back at him. “But I won’t do any more than this. As expected, don’t you think it’s about time he realised it?”

“Act like an adult, you’re not a student anymore. Or could it be that you’re sympathising with that Umino kid?”

I really can’t hide anything from Kisarazu, who I’ve known since university, can I?

“...Still, Kisarazu. What’s a Watson supposed to do when they’re not assisting a Great Detective?”

“Is that what’s got you acting so childishly? When you’re not on a case, you should be living your life.”

Even if you tell me to live my life, acting the part of the Watson is the life I’ve chosen to live. Nevertheless, there was no point bringing this up with Kisarazu.

“In other words, doing my real job and writing more novels?” I asked.

“That’s up to you. I’m not your editor.”

“Well, then. Since we’re on a hot spring trip, it should be fine if I neglect that.”

“Sure, whatever you want to do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I unconsciously raised my voice but Kisarazu remained calm.

“Whether it’s drowning yourself in work or throwing yourself into your hobbies, it’s your life; it’s your decision. And that includes taking on the role of Watson.” He explained.

“And that goes for you, too, as a detective?”

“Being a detective is my obligation.”

“So you’re only hard on yourself, then?”

Steam filled the air between us. Kisarazu had no answer for me. Since there was a lull in the conversation, I absentmindedly stared into the sky. In an instant, what had been a bottomless blue sky up until now began to cloud over. Gradually, rain began to fall. They often say that mountain weather is as fickle as a housecat.

Since we were in the open air bath, while my actual body wasn’t impacted, the plip-plop of raindrops on my head quickly grew annoying. It’d have been fine if we switched to the bath with a roof over it but, figuring that we’d already spent enough time in the bath, we returned to the dressing room. The clock in the dressing room displayed 3:10pm.

We quickly got changed and had just retired to the massage chairs in the lounge area when the door was flung open with the clamour of rushing footsteps.

“Tojo-san. This was your prank, wasn’t it?” Umino asked with a blood curdling look on his face as he presented the camellia petals.

“Bullseye.” I beamed brightly and nodded. “Did you have fun?”

“Was it fun… How would this be fun?” Umino objected while messing up his long hair that stank of tonic.

“Well, you seemed bored. I thought this might give you a little stimulation, right? I guess that’s my bad, it must have been a little too threatening.”

“That’s not it.” He protested. “It’s not that I was particularly scared or anything like that…”

Considering he looked like he was on the verge of tears, it was an obvious bluff. On the other hand, if I pointed that out right then, I’d only be hurting his pride.

“Is that so? In that case, I’ll come up with something far scarier next time.”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

From his long-lashed eyes, he shot me a sharp glare.

“Putting that aside, what made you think it was fine to pluck the flowers offered to Chyulhu?”

“Ah, well, that’s…” Obviously, I couldn’t just say that it’s fine because that ‘god’ is a sham. “That’s because Chyulhu is a pagan god. And, see here, I’m a loyal follower of the Russian Orthodox church.”

Umino knit his brow. He couldn’t work out whether or not I was joking around.

“I wouldn’t say your way of doing things is likely to win any prizes.” Kisarazu shrugged his shoulders. Umino had already squared his shoulders and stormed back to his room.

“But it’s not bad enough for you to step in and stop me, right? You’d obviously caught on since yesterday, ‘Kasu-kun.’” I replied

“If I’d stepped in, would that have stopped you?”

I didn’t respond. I made a show of looking out the window. Outside, the passing rain was dying down and starting to show signs of stopping.

“If the rain lets up, should we head out? I want to go offer some camellias at the shrine. If Doi notices that they’ve been plucked clean, he’ll have a nasty shock.”

Roughly 20 minutes after it had started, the rain stopped and the sky was once again a clear blue. It was just like they say, the fall comes with crisp winds, clear skies and bountiful harvests.

After lunch, Doi headed down the mountain in the station wagon saying he was going shopping and the car still hadn’t returned to the parking lot. I had to wonder what he was buying and what he was planning on making us today. The food last night was delicious, and, so far, today’s had been, too.

In any case, I had to return the camellias to the shrine before Doi noticed they were gone. I plucked one camellia on the wayside. On the other side of the fence, hidden within the steam, I heard the faint sound of water splashing. I wasn’t particularly taken by this inn’s charms, but…

“Let’s take a pleasant stroll over to the observation deck. I bet the maples will be breathtaking after the rain.” 

After switching out the plucked camellias for fresh ones, I invited Kisarazu on a walk and he agreed. Climbing up the stairs and the path uphill, 15 minutes had passed collectively by the time we arrived at the fork in the path. Shoes had left prints on the unpaved path to the shrine. A single set of footprints leading to the observation deck. They must have been left before the rain started because the shoe’s traces had crumbled slightly from getting wet. Yesterday’s footprints had all been erased thanks to the rain last night. In other words, these prints had been made today.

“Interesting. There’s footprints heading here but none heading back.” Kisarazu muttered with great interest. His tone had switched to ‘Detective Mode.’

“Couldn’t they have just taken the alternative route back – reversed from yesterday?” I asked

“That’s what I thought at first, too, but look.”

Kisarazu pointed at the alternate route’s branch road a little further away. In the only patch of bare earth – where the earthquake had destroyed the concrete which, like the shrine path leading up the mountain, paved the road – the footprints had been artificially erased. It appeared that the rain fell after this and the indents left by the footprints had loosely collapsed. 

“What does this mean? The footprints heading here have been left behind, but the footprints heading back have been erased?”

“Thinking normally, that wouldn’t happen. Anyway, let’s follow these footprints.” 

Returning to the shrine path, we made sure not to trample any of the footprints left behind as we made our way to the observation deck. 

The footprints lead straight across the wooden bridge and over to the observation deck with no hesitation whatsoever. Ah, no, there was one spot – it looks like they made a brief stop at the lookout point facing the iron bridge. 

However, once they arrived in front of the shrine facing the observation deck, they’d frantically erased their footprints. Between the shrine and the observation deck’s v-shaped point, there was a wide smear on the ground. Even the autumn leaves that had fluttered to the ground had been covered in dirt and mud. Of course, the portion continuing on to the alternate path was no different. 

They’d probably used the broom left by the shrine. Its bristles were caked in mud.

“What’s going on? Something definitely happened here.”

“I think the person who left the footprints on the shrine path is a victim and the person who erased the footprints on the alternate path is the culprit. And this is the scene of the crime.”

A bloody stone had been dropped in front of the shrine. It was about as large as a one litre bottle of water with a dark red bloodstain splattered on its smooth centre.There wasn’t just blood on the stone but on the roof of the shrine, as well. The victim had collapsed here and the blood was left behind where their hand had smeared it. In front of the stone, for some reason a crushed ping pong ball had sunken halfway into the mud. Since the white ball stuck out like a sore thumb, it definitely wasn’t there yesterday. I held it up and the bottom of the ball was mostly dry. 

“A murder? But where’s the body?”

I even took a look inside the cave on the off chance the body was hidden there but it didn’t look like it. The mouth was still covered in moss and there were no signs that anyone had entered.

In that case… I swung back around to the observation deck to find Kisarazu standing by the iron railing. Once I got closer, I noticed that there were slight traces of blood left among the rust.

With a pounding heart, I looked over the edge. Around fifty metres down the cliff-face there was a flat protrusion roughly the size of two tatami mats stacked vertically. Above a picturesque curtain of autumn leaves, a body had fallen face down. The body’s clothes were wet with rain. A room key had fallen beside the body. Because the pentagonal wooden tag had been pinned beneath the corpse, I couldn’t discern the room number.

“Did they fall from here?” I asked.

“Most likely, the culprit intentionally threw them off.” Kisarazu replied.

“Intentionally?”

“Aah. Since blood splattered on the railing, it’s unmistakable that the victim was attacked here. However, the victim resisted and pushed the killer back all the way to the shrine.” Kisarazu said.

The space between the iron railing and the shrine was roughly 10 metres, though. Certainly, all of the footprints in that space had been swept away. 

“And then the killer landed the final blow in front of the shrine and the victim breathed their last. That’s probably when their hand hit the roof.” Kisarazu concluded.

“Couldn’t they have returned to the railing after touching the roof of the shrine?" I asked.

“If that had happened, the stone that was used to kill the victim would have been dropped in front of the railing. There’s no reason the culprit would have intentionally carried it back to the shrine.”

“So, the culprit intentionally dragged the body back to the railing and threw it over, then? To conceal the crime?”

“I wonder…” Kisarazu disagreed. “It’s such a narrow protuberance that if the killer had just shifted over even slightly the body should have easily fallen to the bottom of the ravine. Moreover, they left the murder weapon as is and it doesn’t seem like they made any effort to hide the blood on the shrine or the railing. Rather, it doesn’t look like the culprit had any interest in concealing the body or the crime at all.”

“So, then, there’s another reason why they intentionally dumped the body off the railing?”

It was only a short distance away, but carrying a blood-soaked adult is a risky move. Since they went out of their way to do it anyway, there must have been some serious circumstances.

“Seems like it. Well, I’ve more or less come up with the reason. Not taking the time to do so would likely have been fatal for the culprit.”

Had he already seen through to the truth of this mystery? Those were reliable words.

“So, then. What should we do about the body? Are we going to meekly leave it there until the police show up?”

If we really pushed ourselves it wasn’t impossible for us to make it down the sloping cliff face to the protrusion where the body lay but, due to the rain, the footholds were even more dangerous.

“Let’s restrain the culprit first. Since their motive is still unclear, it’s plenty possible that they may commit even more crimes.”

Kisarazu calmly pointed this out but I noticed it was different from what he usually said.

“...By any chance, have you already worked out who the culprit is?”

I unintentionally stared him in the face.

“Obviously.” He replied.

The pupils behind Kisarazu’s (non-prescription) glasses flashed as he slowly nodded, an expression brimming with confidence plastered on his face. At that moment, a gust of wind ran through the mountains and a shower of autumn leaves rained upon him.

Just what you’d expect of a Great Detective.

Read the solution here.

[liljplibrary]

Cat Food (Tomoki Morikawa)

Looking to create the finest cat food, the bakeneko Pluto embarks on an operation to manufacture minced human flesh! In order to do this, she invites (lures) four young humans to a human cannery disguised as a cottage... However, the black-cat bakeneko Willy has hidden himself amongst them. Of course, it's illegal to kill one's fellow bakeneko. Just who the hell could Willy be?! Rack your brains if you don't want to be eaten.

Tomoki Morikawa's debut work and the first entry in his Great Detective Sanzunokawa series! For a long time, Cat Food was THE book I most wanted to see translated. So, I guess you can consider this a case of "fine, I'll do it myself."

Unlike Alice, I didn't have an editor on hand to double-check my translation so the quality may be a little weaker than Alice. However, Life (props to Life, as always) did go through the trouble of reading it over anyway and letting me know if anything stood out as odd. All that aside, hopefully it's still readable and enjoyable! If you enjoy mental battles -- ala Liar Game or Death Note -- or incredibly evil detectives, you'll definitely love this series.

How To Extract The PDF/Epub

Use winzip, winrar, etc. to open the zip file. When it asks for a password, flip through a legally-acquired copy of Cat Food until you see an image of a can. These appear very frequently throughout the book and are used to separate sections of the text so it should be easy to find. The password is the English letters printed on the cans. NOTE! It is case-sensitive.

How To Acquire Cat Food

Same as Alice, this translation requires you to have your own copy of the book. You can purchase Cat Food from any of these: Amazon JP CDJapan

You might also have some luck with second-hand Japanese bookstores -- like I did -- or if you're REALLY lucky, some retailers like Kinokuniya, though I should note that I THINK Cat Food might not currently be in print so I really don't know?? Certainly, it's trickier to get your hands on than Alice. I'm sorry.

Content Warnings

Unlike other TLs I've posted, Cat Food is NOT a horror novel. It's mostly a dark-comedy novel, and a pretty funny one at that! That said, I've listed the content warnings I noticed below to be safe. Note that there will be spoilers among them.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

CW: Violence, Blood, Frequent Animal Death, Human Death, Cannibalism

[liljplibrary]

The Murder of Alice (Yasumi Kobayashi)

Recently, Ari Kurisugawa -- an ordinary university student -- has been having dreams of Alice, a girl who wandered into Wonderland. One day, right after she had a dream that Humpty Dumpty fell to his death, she arrives at her university only to find out that a man nicknamed 'Professor Egg' has fallen from the university rooftop. In her next dream, the Gryphon chokes to death on oysters, while in reality a professor dies from food poisoning -- brought on by oysters. Now, in Wonderland, the March Hare and Mad Hatter are on the hunt for the killer... And Alice is their main suspect! A classic 'whodunnit' with a shocking, nightmarish fairy-tale flair!

~The Murder of Alice blurb, Amazon-Japan

The first novel I've ever translated, and the first full novel I've read in Japanese! I actually had this finished before my last post but I've had my wonderful editor Life (working from the French edition) make sure everything is accurate -- after all, this is a fair bit longer than a short story and doesn't have the illustrations of a manga.

I initially agonized over how to ethically release this, since I wasn't sure how okay it would be to just... well... drop a translation of a full book, but I think I've come up with a good compromise. You can download a zip with the pdf and epub of the translated work but it has a password on it. To get the password, you have two options. You can either message me with a timestamped photo of your copy of the book, or you can turn to page 325 of your own copy. On that page, there are a bunch of symbols. Simply take down all the symbols in order (remember, right-to-left, top-to-bottom) and follow this handy chart to reveal the password!

1 = ☆ 2 = □ 3 = ◊ 4 = † 5 = ◯ 6 = ♣ 7 = X 8 = ♠ 9 = ♦ A = ★ B = △ C = ♥

You can buy The Murder of Alice at any of the links below:

Amazon

CD Japan

BookOff (Requires proxy shipping such as Tenso)

Or you'll likely be able to find it at Kinokuniya if your country has one.

I really loved this book, so I hope plenty of people end up reading and enjoying it, too! It's a brilliant blend of SF, horror, and mystery fiction.

CONTENT WARNINGS (Potential Spoilers):

Gore, Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Extortion, Themes of False Realities/Unreality, Animal Death

[liljplibrary]

Patchwork Humanimal (Yasumi Kobayashi)

My first JP-Eng translation on this blog! A short horror story written by Yasumi Kobayashi (names presented in Western order) which presents an interesting twist on the 'mad scientist' narrative. All content warnings are in the tags.

Patchwork Humanimal

By Yasumi Kobayashi (小林泰三)

Originally titled 「人獣細工」*, published in the anthology of the same name

“The Dowager Empress then had Concubine Qi's limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue, cut off her nose, cut off her ears, forced her to drink a potion that made her mute, made her dumb with toxins, and locked her in the pigsty, and called her a human swine.”

- Records of the Grand Historian, Volume 9. On Empress Lü.

For a year after my father’s death, I felt almost nothing whatsoever. While it might sound like I couldn’t bear the deep affection I had for my father, I wouldn’t say that was the case. On the contrary, with my father’s death I let go of many years worth of resentment and became emotionally spent.

However, now that a year has passed, I am able to look back on the relationship between myself and my father objectively.

Though, in the eyes of society, my father’s affection for me was something exceptionally strong, I don’t think so whatsoever. Of course, the unfortunate truth is that if you ask me if I know how other households father’s really look after their children, I’d be hard pressed to answer. However, at the very least, based on what I’ve seen when I’d visited my friend’s homes to play or in soap operas and so forth, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how father’s generally behave towards their children.

I never felt any affection from my father.

If I ever said that, undoubtedly the people who knew my father would object.

“Your Father loved you very much. He was always talking about you whenever the topic allowed, and whenever he was on a business trip finding the perfect souvenir for you was always his top priority. You probably don’t remember this because you were still so young, but whenever I visited your home, you were sat upon your Father’s lap. Couldn’t the reason you don’t feel like your Father had any affection for you be because he was always wearing a gloomy expression around you, concerned as he was with your frail health? I feel sorry for your deceased Father, hearing you say such things.”

It’s natural they’d say that. Certainly, that’s how my father acted. And, certainly, I also remember that I always used to sit in my father’s lap when I was small.

Even so, sure enough, they were under a severe misunderstanding. They only saw my father’s conduct and heard his words. Even though they saw nothing more than the surface-level, they were under the mistaken impression that they knew the depths of his heart. What idiots they are. They were all fooled by my father’s performance.

It wasn’t that my father beat me when no-one was watching. If anything, his performance was even more over-the-top when it was just the two of us.

My father wanted the people around him, myself included, to believe that he loved me. After all, what my father did to my body would never have been permitted unless it was out of love.

People who only saw my father infrequently were easily fooled, but for me who spent every moment living with him, I was sensitive to how my father’s words and actions were all for show.

Similarly, at the times when I was sat upon my father’s lap, I could feel a palpable sense of tension from him on my back. What possible reason could a father have to feel so tense while sitting his beloved three-year old child on his lap?

The times where I couldn’t bear the way my father would tense up so tightly and leapt off his lap were numerous. At those times, without fail, my father would put me back and stroke my hair as he spoke.

“What’s wrong, Yuka? Do you dislike Daddy’s lap? Is the way Daddy’s holding you uncomfortable? Come sit in Daddy’s lap once more. Your Dad would really love for his darling daughter to come back and sit with him.” My father would force a laugh.

From the faint glimmer of sweat on his forehead as he made the expression, I was able to grasp my father’s true feelings. If I could, he wanted me to refuse to sit in his lap, by my own volition. I couldn’t stand the uncomfortable situation, either.

“Yuka wants to sit in a chair of her own. A much big, bigger one!” I remember I also joined in the performance.

My father was a physician. He was the head of his own clinic, as well as being employed as a lecturer at a university. My father’s specialty was organ transplants. Furthermore, I was my father’s patient.

His scalpel had cut into every inch of my body, from tip to toe. Due to a hereditary illness, almost all of my internal organs — including my heart and lungs — had defects in them. Since shortly after my birth, I’ve undergone numerous organ transplant surgeries. Ever since I gained consciousness, my memories have been almost nothing but a string of surgeries. My bedroom also serves as an infirmary. There’s a writing desk directly next to the bed which I work at while sitting on the bed as if it was a desk chair. There are always nurses and doctors coming to and from my room, so there’s no privacy to speak of whatsoever.

The organ transplants continued frequently until my late teens. Ever since elementary school, I’ve had to take a lot of time off. However, my father contributed hefty donations to the private schools I attended so I was able to graduate from high school without dropping out.

I became conscious of the people around me around the time I began puberty. Because I attended an all girls school, when it came time for P.E. class, we didn’t use a changing room. We just changed our clothes in a room cordoned off with a curtain. I always sat on the sidelines so I never had to change my clothes, but my classmate’s youthful skin which I despised was burned into my vision all the same. Of course, they weren’t completely naked nor were they ostentatiously showing off their bodies, but the smooth skin that showed in the spaces between their underwear was nothing like mine. My skin was rough, patchy and riddled with discoloured blemishes. The area from my neck and the area up to the tip of my wrists was fine, but everything my clothes covered was hideous. Ever since I realised that, I’ve worn long sleeved clothes even in the dead of summer. At first, my teacher’s tried to get me to wear the summer uniform in summer, but I had my father ask the school to make an exception for me and it was promptly accepted.

I wear tinted glasses, too. Wherever possible, I try to avoid exposing my skin; including my face. I wear my bangs loosely over my face and, though I don’t have a cold, I often wear a face mask. The bathroom in my house is furnished with a large mirror. That the mirror existed at all spoke volumes of my fathers lack of affection towards me. Against my will, my eyes are forced to look upon the indecipherable scars left behind by surgery that litter my entire body. My father was an incredibly skilled at performing transplants, but his talent for plastic surgery was dubious. The surgery scars he left on me were both haphazardly made and sewn up carelessly. I thought that the cuts are meant to follow the natural creases of the skin but you can clearly see that the skin on either side of the stitches is misaligned and overlapping. It also looks like no effort was made to hide the stitching. If anything, rather than a mistake, it’s as if they were stitched together tightly on purpose. This isn’t how you would treat someone you held affection for.

Of course, I don’t think my father had any ill will. In order to make sure the wounds didn’t reopen, he simply put effort into sewing them up as tightly as he possibly could. However, if he really loved me, don’t you think he’d have unconsciously made an effort to preserve my beauty?

I fear mirrors. But for some inexplicable reason my eyes are still drawn to them. I can’t tear my eyes away from the mishmash naked body of the someone reflected in the mirror. I forget how to even blink and continue to stare at the horrific scars in misery.

A patchwork girl. That’s right. The patchwork girl is me.

There are organs that don’t belong to me buried beneath these scars. Looking at the scars I can see through them to the organs underneath; the organs are soft and pulsating and from them I can see liquid seeping and oozing out. These organs aren’t mine. These organs aren’t even human.

They’re the organs of a pig.

When I was born, there were two major obstacles to transplants.

One was the problem of immunisation.  The bodies of animals, humans included, are furnished with immune systems which fight off foreign body.  Once the immune system judges something as a foreign body, it’ll attack without fail, even though the foreign body is an organ absolutely crucial for continued survival. This is known as transplant rejection. The methods to avoid this are to either wait until you can use an organ which is as close to the patient’s own HLA-cells as possible, or to use immunosuppressants. When it comes to HLA-cells, barring identical twins, even parents and siblings aren’t guaranteed to be perfect matches, let alone someone unrelated, so the chances of a match are exceedingly low. On the other hand, when it comes to immunosuppressants, the person becomes immunodeficient as a result so it’s natural to expect significant side effects. As a result, in reality, both methods are combined in an effort to make up for the weaknesses of the other.

The other problem was the deficit in donors. In comparison to strangers, if it’s the patient’s parents or sibling, there’s a high probability their HLA-cells will be compatible. That being said, you can’t force someone to sacrifice themselves for the sake of a blood relative. However, realistically speaking, you don’t necessarily need to be someone’s child or sibling; when it comes to health issues, in day-to-day life there’s already an unconscious pressure placed on those who are healthy by the people and society around them to donate their organs. It’s a clear-cut violation of human rights. Having said that, it’s almost unthinkable to imagine a person who would willingly donate their body parts — excluding things like bone marrow which are renewable — while they’re still alive to a complete and utter stranger. In that case, the only plausible donors are corpses. However, even though a corpse is an object without any will, the fact is that the deceased’s family can’t see it as simply another object. This, too, is probably human nature; the family wouldn’t accept the deceased’s organs being forcefully harvested. Furthermore, organs like the heart, the lungs or the liver which die if stopped for even a short period of time, a corpse’s are less than desirable. But obviously, you can’t take out organs like the heart and such that are vital for survival from still living humans. Therefore, for a donor to emerge they would need to be brain dead.

However, the brain dead make for even more difficult donors than corpses. It’s not hard to point at a corpse and declare ‘this thing isn’t alive, it’s an object.’ That’s just a matter of fact. However, it’s incredibly difficult to point to a person still warm from body heat, whose veins are still throbbing and who in some cases even still has their automatic spinal reflexes and declare it an object. While it’s easy enough to say it’s a fact that — unlike in cases of cardiac arrest where the body may be revived — the cessation of brain function means that the death of the entire body is sure to follow, actually believing that a brain dead body and a dead body are one and the same is not.

Practically speaking, there are people who doubt that “brain death” is anything more than a concept doctor’s have come up with in order to perform transplants, and we can’t simply label the category of ‘life that is similar to death’ as such.

In order to resolve these issues, many resources have been dedicated to the development of xenotransplant research. In other words, the transplanting of the organs of nonhuman animals into human bodies.

I say this, but historically speaking, xenotransplantation is — in itself — hardly a new concept. The very first xenotransplants performed on  humans were kidney transplants. Kidneys were transplanted from goats and pigs to human beings. However, unfortunately, the immune system’s powerful rejection of the organs lead to near immediate necrosis. Though, the experiment in that story just now wasn’t particularly scientific since they didn’t even bother using immunosuppressants.

So, how does the immune system differentiate between foreign substances and its own bodies organs? In fact, the bodies own cells are clearly marked. These marks are called histocompatibility antigens. In the case of humans, these are referred to as HLA antigens. And just like how there are blood types, there are different types of HLA. Moreover, the HLA types aren’t as simple as the ABO-blood types.

To begin, there are 24 different variations of the HLA-A antigen. And then there’s the HLA-B antigen which has 50 variations. So, according to basic math, the odds of finding both matching HLA-A and HLA-B antigens is around 1 in 1200. On top of that, there are other HLA antigens besides A and B: C, D, DR, DQ, and DP all exist; the chances of all of these matching between two complete strangers is one in several tens of thousands. However, in reality, not all of the HLA antigens need to match for the organ transplant to be able to take place. While it’d be ideal to have all the HLA antigens match, it’s impossible to find someone who fits that criteria outside of identical twins. As such, even if the organ comes from a blood relative, it remains necessary to use immunosuppressants.

However, there is a loophole in the apparently flawless immune system. As long as the HLA antigens match, it can’t differentiate between its own bodies organs and a stranger’s organs, so it won’t attack. It doesn’t matter if everything other than the HLA is different. They could be cells of a different race, or cells of a different species.

—Or the cells of a swine.

Nowadays, the problems surrounding organ transplants from brain dead or living people are a topic of the past. That’s because transplanting the organs of animals has become the norm. Animals that are as close to human as possible would be the ideal choice, but realistically speaking there are only a few species of anthropoid ape’s and they’re difficult to breed. Furthermore, reproduction costs time. Among already existing livestock, pigs were selected because they’re on a relatively comparable biological scale to human beings.

Whenever a disease is identified in a person’s internal organs, a skin sample is swiftly taken from the patient. Then HLA antigens are extracted from the dominant genes, next more are cultivated, and then the antigens are implanted into the core of a fertilised pig embryo.

The pig embryo repeatedly undergoes a cloning process, and then is implanted within the womb of a sow. After enough time, a piglet is born with the same HLA antigens as the patient. Thus, when the organs of the rapidly maturing pig are transplanted there’ll be almost no chance of rejection occurring. Even though organs are clearly from an entirely different species, the immune system judges them to be the person’s own.

I was the very first successful instance of a pig organ transplant; I was lab material. He gained data on all sorts of organs through my treatment, and the field of xenotransplantation developed significantly and rapidly. At any rate, nearly every single one of my internal organs has been replaced with a swines. The transplant surgeons must have been waiting with bated breath for my father to publish my research data that they hungered for so badly they could practically taste it.

“Human swine!”

Someone cried. Or perhaps I misheard?

It was a decade ago, at a time when I was absentmindedly staring out the classroom window at the schoolyard, that those words ran through my soul like a knife.

I tried to turn around but for some reason my body refused to move. After an absurdly long period of time passed, I was able to gradually, gently, begin to twist my body.

No. It probably took an instant. It felt as if all the girls around me were moving like frames of a film running in slow motion. None of them showed any semblance of being alive, but they continued emitting the scent of young women.

My gaze crawled across every pore of their faces. I scanned them hunting for the source of those awful words, though I had no intention of confronting her. But I was unable to find the owner of the voice. Still searching for the owner of the voice, I prayed that she didn’t actually exist.

The young women all moved in a seductive malaise, in comparison my gaze moved far more sluggishly and fretful.

In the next instant, time resumed it’s usual flow. In that instant, all those girls began to blend together and continuously switch places with such speed that I couldn’t keep track of what was going on.

After all this time, I still have no clue who said those words.

Even so, they continue to reverberate within my ears.

“Human swine!”

What a nasty phrase. If I was going to have those words thrown at me, I would have preferred if they just called me a ‘swine.’ There’s no way to escape the term ‘human swine’, it leaves an unbearable echo.

“Did someone say something, just now?” I gave a crooked smile I prayed looked pleasant.

Everybody stopped moving. I felt their needle gaze’s pierce my patchwork body all at once.

“Something wrong, Yuka?” Saori’s voice called out from by the classroom entrance.

“Just now, I heard someone’s voice.” I responded in a quiet voice.

“A voice? You say you heard someone’s voice but, well, everyone was talking…” Saori was doubtful.

“Uuuuh… That’s not it. Someone was… That is… They were bad mouthing me.” I said, my voice growing even quieter.

Every girl in the classroom began surrounding me, all of them chattering at once as they did.

“Did you really hear that?” Saori asked. “Are you sure you didn’t just mishear something?”

I silently shook my head.

“Well, what did you hear?” Yumiko joined in. “What kinda insults were they spouting?”

“They were saying cruel things.” I ran both my hands down my chest to my stomach. “About my body.”

“Your body… About your transplants?”

I nodded.

“Did they say it loud?”

“Yeah. But they weren’t calling it out or anything.”

“Well, then. Did anyone else hear it?” Yumiko looked around the group.

The girls did nothing but stare at each other’s faces.

“As I thought, it was all in your head, wasn’t it?” Saori asked again.

“I’m not really sure.” I hid my face and slunked down in my seat.

“What’d they say?” Yumiko said.

“Human swine.” I replied.

A commotion rippled through the room.

In the end, no-one had any clue whatsoever. No-one who’d heard or said ‘human swine’ came forth. Even though I claimed that I’d heard someone say it, it was just my word, so nothing could come of it. Nevertheless, the uproar reached the ears of our teachers and they spent that day’s homeroom giving us a talk on bullying and human rights and so forth.

From that day forth, the phrase ‘human swine’ was ingrained upon my heart.

No-one has entered my father’s bedroom ever since his death.

Though I call it a bedroom, the reality is that it had long been turned into a study — data and research materials are scattered all over it, just another extension of his laboratory. Some months before my father’s death, they were all packed up in several tens of cardboard boxes and sent here from the university and his clinic.

The majority were his experiment notes, but there were also a substantial amount of disks packed with graphs and charts and documents, and video recordings of the surgeries and experiments he performed. As soon as my father died, various research institutions requested to review his documents. I rejected them all.

I think my father realised his death was near. In that case, I wonder, did he not want anyone else to see the vast data he’d collected? Did this have something to do with a secret he was trying to conceal? If that’s the case, I’ll obey his dying wish to keep his research materials and data private.

That’s what I thought, so I kept my father’s room locked.

Before long, a year had passed and the day arrived where my heart had gradually settled down enough that I suddenly had the thought of organising my father’s research materials. Of course, I didn’t have a deep understanding of medicine, moreover it’s not like I comprehend my father’s research. I have no idea what a layperson can do, but I feel like this could be a substitute for a real connection with my father.

The room didn’t have ventilation and, in the span of a year, every inch of the room had been covered in a sticky, white film that was neither dust nor mould nor cobwebs, and which seemed to glow with a dim light even with the curtains drawn. The cardboard boxes had been left overturned, the research materials abandoned. Judging from appearances, the labels on the notebook covers, as well as the disks and videos, didn’t have dates written on them. Since all the titles were things like “A-3B” or “YUKA-αω”, it was considerably difficult to tell their contents apart.

I picked up notebook that seemed like a good place to start and seated my rear on the chair my father used at the desk my father worked at. Dust had collected on both my father’s chair and his desk but without worrying about dirtying my skirt or top, I wiped the desk’s surface with my sleeve and opened up the notebook.

15th March, Kidney Transplant. Donor: Y-III……

My eyes suddenly leapt to those words. Most likely, they were about me. When I was ten years old, I received a kidney transplant in the spring. The notebook continued on with cryptic words and symbols scrawled across numerous pages.

There was no mistaking that the donor referenced was the pig who the kidney had been extracted from. So was Y-III the name of the pig, or was it perhaps an indicator of its condition? Giving them uninspired names like ‘Y-III’ and such would be just like my father. As I flipped through the pages, I came across the notation ‘V-No. 6a.’ It looked like ‘V-No.’ was an abbreviation of ‘video number.’ Digging through the mountain of research materials, I hunted for the video.

In the end, I never found a video with ‘V-No. 6a’ written on it; all I found was a video with ‘A-6’ on the label.

My father’s room didn’t have a VCR player, so for the time being I took the video back to my room which did.

On playback, a disturbing image started to appear and narration mixed with static began. It was my father’s voice. On the screen, several doctors wearing surgical gear stood around; my father was among them. Apparently, the sound wasn’t recorded at the same time as filming, it was inserted afterwards.

Suddenly, the footage was split into two segments. Both respective sections depicted an operating table in their centre. On one, a lone girl lay sleeping while on the other an infant pig rested on its side. You couldn’t see the girls face very well, but from the dark-red birthmark that resembled a fish’s head on her right shoulder, I could tell it was me.

Both the donor and recipients surgery began almost simultaneously.

My part of the surgery was directly handled by my father, and he performed it with the utmost care. Meanwhile, on the contrary, the piglet’s surgery was being handled in a considerably crude fashion by a fledgling doctor. Partway through making an incision, it seems he severed a large artery and fresh blood began gushing out.

Before long, two kidneys were extracted from the piglet and, without even bothering to stitch the wound back up, it was abandoned. The scene of the piglet disappeared, and my side expanded to fill the screen. As soon as the doctors in charge of the swine were done extracting the kidneys, they were placed in a metal container and brought over to my operating table.

My father wordlessly accepted the kidneys and, after giving his assistants two or three instructions, slowly began the transplant. Seeing the insides of my own body, I was attacked by an unceasing wave of nausea but I grit my teeth and continued watching the video.

After a while, first checking whether urine had leaked from my ureter tubes in the process, my father stepped away from the operating table. Sewing me back up was the fledgling doctor’s responsibility.

It turns out that the clumsy stitches upon my body weren’t solely my father’s fault. However, as harsh as it is to say, the fact that if you look at my body, it’s obviously the handiwork of a fledgling doctor shows that, as expected, my scars were of practically no concern to my father.

The piglet never reappeared. But if it had just been left in that state, it couldn’t have lived much longer. The only still living part of that piglet are those kidneys — just those kidneys.

I lay my palm on the surgical scar.

And just like it had started, the video came to an abrupt end.

“You need to have the surgery.” My father admonished me in the hospital room. “Your heart and lungs are especially frail. We don’t know how many more months they’ll last. There’s no way you can live if your heart stops.”

“I don’t want it! I don’t want any more pig bits in my body, Dad.” I begged him, shedding tears.

“I can’t help that.” My father shook his head. “As your father and as a doctor, I can’t let you refuse. Besides, your Dad just can’t understand why you’re so bothered by the organ transplants.”

“Because they’re pig organs! At school, they call me ‘human swine’!”

“Human swine?” For a moment, my father lowered his voice. “Well, they can say what they want. But this surgery is no different than putting in contact lenses or dentures. No-one ever worries about what contact lenses or dentures are made out of. In reality, in cases such as where the cornea is scarred, pig skin tissue is used as the raw material to make the contact lenses. But it’s not like the people who use contact lenses get turned into pigs.”

“But the transplant is putting it inside my body! Pigs blood is getting mixed with my blood; pigs flesh is getting mixed with my flesh.” I screamed, ignoring the snot running down my face.

“There really isn’t that big a difference between human tissue and pig tissue. For a start, almost everyone in this world eats pig meat, right? So the blood and flesh of all those kids who bully you saying ‘human swine’ came from the corpses of pigs.”

“Transplants are totally different to eating! The pig parts come from a pig that’s still alive, after all!”

“Of course. Once the heart stops beating, the success rate of the surgery drops dramatically. If it’s the kidneys, corneas or bones, there’s no problem with waiting until the donor is dead to transplant them. But for the heart, lungs or liver, it just can’t be done.”

“I won’t do it! I won’t!” I persevered. “You’re lying to me, Dad. I don’t actually need to have the surgery! You just want the research data, that’s all!”

My father’s expression changed.

“That’s not true. You were born with a serious illness. Don’t you see that’s why your Dad is using all his energy desperately researching organ transplants for the sake of helping you?”

I continued to cry without looking at my father’s face. My father gave an exasperated sigh and, for a while, he fretfully tried to lift my spirits but, soon enough, he gave up and began to leave the hospital room.

“Dad, wait.” I sniffled. “There’s still one thing I need to ask you.”

“What is it? Go ahead.” My father put on as tender a voice as he could muster.

“Who is my Mom, really?”

“Where did this come from?” My fathers eyes wavered indecisively. “You know your mother passed away when you were born, Yuka.”

“You’ve told me that story a million times, Dad, but I don’t believe you. After all, it’s weird. We don’t have a single family photo in our house. If we were a normal household, even if we didn’t keep them in an album, we’d still have a bunch of photos or something.” I said as if I was cross-examining him. “Why don’t we have any photos of Mom?”

“Some families don’t like to take photos.”

“That’s not all. I’ve never met a single one of Mom’s relatives. I don’t even know the names of Mom’s parents or where they live.”

“They all have their own reasons for that.”

I pulled open the desk drawer and retrieved an envelope.

“Here’s our family register!”

“Yuka, what’s the meaning of this…” My father’s eyes opened wide.

“Until now, I never noticed it because anything that required the family register was handled by you, Dad…… In my family register, your name is the only one there. The ‘mother’ column has been left completely blank. What the hell is that supposed to mean, huh? What happened to Mom?”

After staring at the family register for a while, my father shook his head sadly and sat in front of the computer terminal in the corner of the  hospital room.

“Do you mind if I use this, Yuka?”

Even though I hesitated to answer, my father didn’t wait for my response and switched on the computer terminal. With practiced strokes, he remotely accessed the main computer.

“Take a look. This is your mother.”

I stared at the screen.

Height, weight, stature, education, IQ, physical ability, special skills. I was buried under those paragraphs filled with lines of letters and numbers.

“What is this? What do you mean this is Mom?” I couldn’t understand what was going on.

“It’s what you asked, Yuka. “Who is my mother?” But your Dad doesn’t know either. What’s written here is everything that your Dad knows about your mother.”

“I don’t get it. What the hell… No way!! That’s…” The realisation hit me.

“In his youth, your Dad was completely and utterly devoted to his studies.” For some reason I can’t explain, this was the only time I’d ever seen my usually stoic father look a little sad. “I never had the time to find a wife. But your Dad wanted to have children. That’s why I saved up my money to purchase a high-quality ovum. I knew it as soon as I saw that data sheet. This was the finest quality egg I had been waiting for. Of course, it was incredibly expensive. It wasn’t just the egg that cost money. I also had to rent the womb. But make no mistake, Yuka, you are my daughter. My seed was used so there can be absolutely no mistake, you are my child.”

I remember feeling sick.

“So, half of me was bought. It was bought with money just like a dog or a cat. And then the remaining half of me comes from the same man that was willing to buy his child with money.”

“What are you saying?! Buying seed and eggs, and renting wombs is all perfectly legal. You were born through a completely respectable procedure, Yuka. I shouldn’t have hidden it from you until now. I’m sorry. But I was just thinking about you, Yuka… That is… In other words… I thought it would be a shock…… Was it a shock?”

“Yeah. Kinda.” I covered my face with my hands.

“I was planning on telling you eventually. I was going to tell you everything when you were older, when you were an adult and your illness had fully healed.” My father was growing increasingly flustered. “It’s really nothing to be upset about. There are many children with parents like that in the world. It’s just kept a secret from the children. After all, you see. They wanted a child. Wouldn’t it be nonsensical to have to move in with a complete stranger for that?” It sounded like my father was speaking to himself, rather that to me. “We should all have the right to raise our own children in the way we think best. Other people shouldn’t interfere. Besides, I’m absolutely repulsed at how she could knowingly allow for her imperfection riddled genes to be combined with my own. As long as you pay for it, you can buy the ovum with flawless genetic material you’re looking for. Wouldn’t anyone want their own sperm to fertilise the perfect ovum?!” My father’s shouting abruptly brought me back to my senses. “Ah… Aaah… I’m so sorry. I got a little overexcited there. It’s alright. You don’t have to worry. It’s fine. It’s just that your Dad… Your Dad……”

My father drooped his shoulders and started to leave the hospital room.

“Wait!” Why did I tell you what you wanted me to say? “It’s fine. I’ll go through with the surgery.”

Was it because my father’s figure looked far too miserable? Was it because it was far too pathetic to watch a man who couldn’t even fall in love like a normal person try and justify himself?

My father suddenly lifted his head.

“But I have one condition.”

“A condition?” My father’s eyes were gleaming.

“After this surgery is over, next I want you to operate on my skin.”

“Your skin? Have you been burnt somewhere?”

“It’s not that I’ve been burnt. Just look at it!” I threw off my gown. “My body is covered in stitches!”

“You’re worried about your surgical scars?!” My father seemed shocked.

I couldn’t believe my father’s reaction.

“I want to cover up this skin. Of course, I know that the scars themselves won’t disappear. But, at the very least, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the outside.”

My father stared at my skin as if he was bewitched, and then nodded his head with an ominous smile. And then, without saying another word, he left the hospital room.

As soon as my father was gone, I broke down in a fit of tears. I regretted my words bitterly.

The first transplant performed on me was when I was three months old. Even had the abnormalities were discovered immediately after I was born and my genes had been implanted into a pig embryo, it’s absolutely impossible that they could have performed the surgery that quickly. Clearly, my father had planned for this from the start. I have no doubt that he must have divided the purchased ovum fertilised with his sperm cells into multiple parts; only one part was implanted in the rented uterus of a woman he was paying, while the rest were used to implant genetic material into pig embryos. My father said that he wasn’t expecting the egg he fertilised to have any hereditary illnesses. I think I can believe that. In case the gamete being sold has a risk of hereditary disease, there is an obligation for a chart of characteristics to always be produced, and I checked that characteristics chart registered with the Ministry of Health and Welfare. And, yes, the genetic profile included in that chart partially matched my own. I think I can also rule out the possibility the chart was falsified, nor was it switched with the chart of another ovum.  In that case, doesn’t that mean the truth behind my defective organs is a mystery?

My father only presented a fraction of the transplants I received to the academic community and the media. The vast majority of the surgeries were covered up. Looking through the files my father left behind, I realise that there were often times when I was receiving surgery once a month.

At the very least, my father was doing something illegal.

Implanting animal cells with human genetic material is only permitted if it’s select cells with specific functions. For example, HLA designating genes, or particular enzymes, or genes that produce hormones.

However, my father crossed that boundary when he implanted human genes — my genes — into pig cells. He was outright producing malformed pigs with human organs. The organs transplanted onto me weren’t only those hidden inside my body, but those that can be seen from outside, as well.

The entirety of my ears — including my inner ear — were transplanted, but you can’t tell from the shape. I think my father figured it would obviously look incredibly bizarre if a human had pig ears. Not that a pig with human ears is any more pleasant to see.

Besides my ears, my teeth, tongue and nose were all transplanted from pigs. Surprisingly, my nipples and mammary glands are also from pigs. Pigs only develop breasts when they are in their child rearing stage, prior to that stage they are dormant. However, my breasts completed their development during puberty normally and without any incident. Supposing that pig hadn’t been used in a transplant and was allowed to grow into an adult, would it have become a pig with the bosom of a woman? Or was it the exposure to my human hormones that caused them to take on a human shape?

Stomach, intestines, trachea, arteries, nerves, bones, and muscles. Every conceivable inch of my body was stolen from pigs. Even my salivary gland is a pigs. Every minute of every day, I’m slurping down pig spit. By the time I reached my father’s notes on transplanting both upper and limbs, as expected, I no longer believed my eyes. No matter what, at the very least, I wanted to believe that my hands and feet were my own.

But I still looked, anyway. That harddrive contained an image of a piglet with those disproportionate, feeble arms and legs sprouting from it’s spherical body.

“Maybe I am a human swine.” I muttered while I ate my bento together with Saori and Yumiko.

It had been several weeks since my heart transplant was finished.

They both pretended not to hear me and brought their chopsticks to their mouths. An uncomfortable silence filled the air between us. Three people enveloped by the surrounding noise — the boisterous voices and bustling of young women brimming with pride.

“Hey, the phrase ‘Human Swine’ is from the Records of the Grand Historian, isn’t it? We learnt about it the other day in Chinese literature class. So maybe they weren’t actually making fun of me. But it’s all the same either way. In the end, I’m still a human swine.” I continued speaking to the two of them, ignoring my food.

Saori’s chopsticks stopped. Yumiko continued eating without skipping a beat. Sadly, I could barely taste a thing.

Of course, I realised it must be bothersome to hear me say something like that out of nowhere. But I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.

“You’re not Consort Qi, Yuka.” Yumiko said, looking at my face. “And your dad isn’t Empress Lü, either.”

“How can you say that for sure? You’re not me, Yumiko, and you’re not my Dad.” I spat fiercely.

“That’s right. I’m neither you, nor your dad, Yuka. But you’re not Consort Qi or even Empress Lü, either. I have no idea how you’re getting yourself and a human swine mixed up.” Yumiko muttered, thinking about how everyone around us could hear.

“Because I’m turning into a human swine. But, obviously, it’s not the same thing. Consort Qi’s was turned into a human swine from the outside, by getting rid of her body parts. But I’m being turned into a human swine by taking out my insides!”

“None of your insides have been gotten rid of.” Yumiko finally lifted her head. “Your organs are being switched out for new ones before they become a problem. These days, stuff like that is normal. That said, surgeries like Yuka’s aren’t just done when the problem’s just starting.”

“That’s right. My aunt recently got a pig liver transplant.” Saori finally opened her mouth while trembling. “Stuff like that happens all the time.”

“You should be thankful to your Dad that you can have a healthy body, instead of comparing yourself to a human swine and making problems for him.” Yumiko seemed slightly angry at me.

“You’re wrong.” Flustered, I struggled to express my thoughts. “It’s not like that. You’re mistaken about something. I’m not just receiving normal transplants like Saori’s aunt got. My surgeries are experimental.”

“So what?” Yumiko’s voice was gradually getting louder. “When we were little kids, the success rate of transplanting animal organs into people was almost zilch. But isn’t it out of parental love that, when his daughter was deeply ill and there was nothing else he could do, he still took a chance on it anyway? Obviously the records of those surgeries were always going to end up as research data, and sure it might look like it was an experiment in the end, but who cares about that if it helps with your illness.”

“Until now, heart transplants have pretty much never been done, so don’t you think this will be a big relief to many people? And it’ll all be thanks to you and your dad, Yuka.” Saori backed Yumiko up.

“But there’ll be almost nothing of me left!” My breathing was growing heavy.

“What are you talking about? What are you even saying?” Yumiko asked.

“Empress Lü took away Consort Qi’s hands and feet and eyes and ears and ability to speak. I’ve also had so many kinds of things stolen from me. Kidneys, livers, heart, lungs, pancreas…”

“But it’s everyone else’s problem, too. If no-one did anything, you’d have died!” Yumiko’s voice was almost at a yell.

“Both me and Consort Qi survived. Everything that was taken from Consort Qi was important for her to live as a human, but wasn’t necessary for her just to survive. Meanwhile, everything that’s been taken from me is necessary for my continued existence, and pig replacements have been switched in in their place to keep me alive.”

“It wasn’t just body parts that were taken from Consort Qi.” It seemed like Yumiko had stopped caring about all the surrounding eyes. “She was called a ‘human swine’ after having all of her dignity as a human being taken from her. That’s nothing like you, Yuka!”

“Are you sure about that?” My tears spilled forth in heavy droplets. “If just having your flesh be taken away is enough to turn you into a human swine, how can you say that having your human flesh taken away and replaced with pig flesh doesn’t?”

***

While being tormented with flashbacks of my past, I continued searching through my fathers remaining research notes. Despite being near overwhelmed by the ocean of research data, I was beginning to dwell what it meant to be human. I don’t mean a philosophical concern like the meaning of a human life. It was more practical than that. I wanted to know what a human life actually was. In other words, what kind of conditions needed to be met to call yourself something human.

Humans receive human rights. There are those that would say we should grant the nonhuman human rights but, at present, you can kill nonhumans without being charged with homicide, and you can take or do whatever you want to them, as much as you like, without it being a crime. There must be a fundamentally distinct disparity between them.

Leaving aside unidentified cryptids like the Yeti or Big Foot, in the natural world there has never been an animal discovered that could be easily mistaken for a human. However, in the present, we’ve seen an abnormal jump in the development of genetic engineering. In fact, though it’s prohibited by law, my father implanted pigs with human genes which developed several human features.

If a human is defined by “the specific genes they have and the form they manifest”, the potential for my father’s manufactured, malformed pigs to also be humans is made apparent.

I can see the potential rebuttal to this way of thinking.

The formation of chromosomes that aggregate the genetic material is called a genome. You can put in no end of human genes into it, but the base structure remains the genome of a pig. You can’t judge whether or not it’s human on the presence or absence of genes for specific human features, you have to judge based on the entire genome, they’d say. That’s easy to say. But when push comes to shove, are things like mapping out an entire genome and such really possible? A pig that has been implanted with part of a humans genes is not a human, it’s still a pig. And vice-versa, if a human is implanted with pig genes, they’re still a human. Well then, what if half their genes came from a human and half their genes came from a pig?

Even if someone tried to create something like that, it would have fatal complications in its developmental stages and would die before it could become a living creature in the first place. However, pigs and humans are both mammals so they share the majority of their genes. In the near future, if it becomes possible to recombine genes with precision, it may become possible to produce an animal that shares the genes of both pigs and humans, so as things stand we can’t rule out the possibility. So, what would that animal be really: a human, or a pig?

The opinion that we can ensure such a problem like that never arises if the law prohibits it is not a real solution. The extent of the law’s ability to control human behaviour is far from perfect. As long as it’s technically possible, someone, somewhere, is always going to do it. And then, once a creature like that has been born, you will have to hand down a judgement.

There’s no point to comparing the ratio of human to pig. From the very beginning, in addition to the fact humans and pigs share the majority of their genes, I have no idea how we should evaluate the genes that don’t express themselves physically called introns. For example, if every single one of your introns was replaced completely with a pigs, wouldn’t you still become a pig even though you didn’t take on any of their features?

Even if we had completely clear answers to questions like that, we’d still be overlooking something. In regards to myself, I am a human with pig organs. Almost all of my organs are made from genuine pig cells, and those nuclei contain pig genes. Of course, the genes that determine the HLA and the shape of the organ are human in origin, however that isn’t grounds enough for those organs to be human. If it was, we’d have to call the pig those human genes were implanted into for the transplant human, as well.

The majority of my organs are pigs’. Parts of my skin, muscles and bones are also pigs’. And the bone marrow that produces my blood was transplanted from a pig, so that makes the genes in my white blood cells pigs’, too. If I was wrapped up in some kind of incident and the police took a blood sample from me, the results would probably declare it pigs’ blood.

Despite being afflicted with these detestable thoughts, why do I continue to investigate? Just what the hell do I think I’m doing? A voice deep within my heart cried out. I could no long remember. Perhaps I was searching for evidence that would truly convince me that I’m human.

It was around ten years ago that I first started to think I was a human swine. Ever since I learned the phrase ‘swine’ in Chinese literature class, whenever I heard or said the word ‘pig’, it’s like the character for ‘swine’ appeared before me. It’s like I’ve become obsessed, I can’t get that word out of my head. I’ve continued spending every single day thinking about the’ human swine’ for close to a decade now. If things continue like this, my mind won’t hold out much longer. I need to track down something that proves I’m human soon. But just what the hell could do that?

***

Three years and four months old. Gastric transplant.

My stomach wasn’t one of the organs that needed removal. So why would he take the risk of transplanting it?

Two years and eight months old. Cornea transplant.

So I’ve only ever seen the world through the corneas of a pig.

Two years and two months old. Vocal cord transplant.

What did my actual voice sound like, I wonder?

One year and ten months old. Tear duct transplant.

My tears are the tear of a pig.

One year and six months old. Nipple and mammary gland transplant.

There’s no point to that. Why would you even do that?

One year old. Womb transplant.

I…… I’m……

Eight months old. Ovary transplant.

“Soon this beautiful skin will be yours, Yuka.” My father gleefully stroked the hide of a pig.

This pig that had been raised in an underground lab was devoid of hair. No, to be precise, there was long, black hair growing in localised patches — on top of its head, above its eyes, at the base of its forelegs, and on its genitals. The glossy looking skin that resembled a young woman’s made the pig’s figure look even uglier.

“It’s rather plump, isn’t it? In order to make sure the epidermis’ surface was large enough, we intentionally fattened it up. In any case, the exterior of a pig and the exterior of a human have considerably different shapes. If there are wrinkles or stitches left behind, there’s really no point to the surgery. But if we have a large quantity, we can do the treatment.” My father narrowed his eyes. “At first I thought we’d just transplant skin to the part with surgery scars, however it turns out its unexpectedly difficult to regulate the melanin pigmentation. The colour of your future skin just wasn’t coming out how we wanted. I realised that if we went ahead with the transplant as things were, your skin would be mismatched at the seams. And so I had the thought that we’ll just transplant the skin of your entire body.”

“Dad, I have a request.” I pet the head of the pig. “It’s about the birthmark on my shoulder.”

“Aah, now that you mention it, I do recall you had a birthmark.”  My father said without interest. “What about your birthmark?”

“If I have the skin transplant, will my birthmark be gone?”

“What? Is this what you’re talking about? You don’t have to worry about that. If the surgery is successful, your entire body will be the lightly-tanned colour of a healthy, radiant beautiful woman. Well, it’s not easy for me to sacrifice this pale beautiful woman you are right now, though.”

“That’s not it.” I continued petting the unresponsive pig. “I want the birthmark to remain.”

“Eh?!” As I expected, my father seemed shocked at this. “It’s not like I can’t do that, but why would you want to intentionally leave that birthmark behind?”

I threw off my gown, tugged on the hem of my nightie and bared my shoulder. There it was, about the size of a fist, dark-red and in the shape of a fish’s head.

“I’ve had this on my body ever since the moment I was born.”

“Right. It’s because of that birthmark that I was always able to tell my darling daughter apart from the other children.”

Does that mean if I didn’t have that birthmark, my father wouldn’t be able to identify his own child? However, that was just more ammunition for my position.

“This bit of my body is undoubtedly part of me”

“You have plenty of body parts that haven’t been replaced, besides that birthmark. There’s your spleen, and then there’s your thyroid gland…”

“I can’t check those parts from the outside. Besides, there’s no guarantee that they won’t need to be transplanted in the future. But if its a part of my skin, I’ll always be able to look at it and the possibility of it needing to be replaced is quite low…… Not unless this patch of skin gets burnt or skin cancer, anyway.”

“Even then, we could leave behind a different patch of skin. Say your back or your stomach. Or if those are too conspicuous, we could do your inner thigh or the back of your foot.”

“No. I want this birthmark. A patch of pale white among the gently tanned skin just doesn’t leave a strong impression. As I thought, it has to be this birthmark. This fish-head birthmark.”

“Why, does it leave an especially good impression?”

“The birthmark leaves a bad impression. Especially when it’s this big. That’s why a clear impression remains. There’s a dark red birthmark on Yuka’s shoulder shaped like the head of a fish. It’s just like you said a short while ago, Dad. It’s thanks to that birthmark that you were able to tell me apart from the other babies. In other words, this birthmark is my identifier. This birthmark is a secret weapon for identifying Yuka. Existence depends on being recognised by others. As long as I have this birthmark, I’m able to be recognised as Yuka. If I lose this birthmark, at the same time, I’ll stop being Yuka.”

“What are you saying?” My father was flustered. “Your dad can’t understand what you mean in the slightest.”

“Why can’t you understand something so simple? Year by year, more of my body is being replaced with something that isn’t mine. Even so, why do you still think I’m Yuka, Dad?”

“Of course, you’re Yuka. A few organs being replaced doesn’t change that. That’s not the part that matters. If it’s the only one that continues to hold Yuka’s personality, the entire body is Yuka.”

“You’re wrong. How can you know my personal identity? What basis do you have to say that my personality now is the same one I held before my lungs and heart were transplanted?”

“I don’t have a good answer when you put it like that.” My father folded his arms. “That is to say, are you saying that you, yourself, can’t sense your own personal identity, Yuka?”

“Obviously, the consciousness that tells me that I am Yuka is always there. But that’s not the problem.” I struck the pig’s youthful skin. “If this pigs consciousness told it ‘I am Yuka’, this pig wouldn’t suddenly become me. Everyone would still think that this pig is a pig, and think that Yuka is me. Because of that, this pig is a pig and I am Yuka. Whatever me or this pig think has nothing to do with it. Whenever you look me, you vaguely put together that I am Yuka from your impression of my whole body and that’s the only reason why you think that I am Yuka, it’s not because you’ve managed to grasp my personality.”

“While that may be true, why the birthmark? Even without the birthmark, Yuka is Yuka. You’re not a baby anymore, so it’s not your sole identifier. For example, aren’t your voice, face and mannerisms more than enough to tell that you’re Yuka?”

“But this birthmark leaves an intense impression on those who see it.”

“But it’s an impression of disgust, right?” My father spat the words out.

“Do you feel disgust towards my birthmark, Dad?”

“No, that is, that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s fine, you don’t need to deny it. It’s natural to feel disgust towards grotesque things. It’s not a problem if your emotions can take over your logic when they need to. Anyway, even if it has a negative connotation, as long as this birthmark can leave the strongest impression on people that I am Yuka, there’s no problem. That’s why this dark-red, fish head is the part of me that is the most ‘me.’ To get rid of it, would be to get rid of me.”

***

The organisation of the data my father left was going very slowly. At the very least, I thought I could put them in chronological order based on the dates and such, but it turns out there was a large quantity of research materials which didn’t have their date recorded properly so I couldn’t even do that.

It’d be much easier if I had some expert assistance, but for some reason I didn’t feel like showing it to anyone else. Even if I did show it to them, it would be after I’d already achieved my goal.

My goal? Just what was my goal? What was I struggling through this pile of notebooks filled with occult-like, untranslatable and incomprehensible phrases scrawled like they were spells, video recordings of gruesome scenes, and computer data that no application could even recognise for? I was searching for knowledge that would release me from my suffering. I have been constantly tortured by an inexplicable anxiety. Just what kind of being am I? What was I to my father? Why did my father raise me? All of those anxieties come from my ignorance. If I knew the truth, if everything was dragged out into the light of day, then all of my anxieties would disappear. Whatever the truth may be, it’d be better than ignorance.

The doorbell rang.

I pulled up the camera-feed of the entryway on the computer terminal next to me.

A woman of roughly the same age as me appeared on the screen. Her name didn’t come to mind immediately. However, I felt sure that this wasn’t the absolute first time I’d seen her. Her face sparked something in my memory. But because my memory over the months and years had become foggy, and possibly because of the marks of age etched upon her face, I couldn’t recall.

“Yes. Who is it?” I turned on the switch of the intercom.

“Um. I’m called Tanuma.” The woman responded in a slightly strained voice. “Uhhh, my maiden name is Minamiura. Saori Minamiura.”

Saori!

“Please wait a moment.”

I hurried to the front door while dusting off my clothes.

I hadn’t seen Saori since our high school graduation.

“It’s been a while, Yuka.” I opened the door and the young Saori I knew appeared before me.

But in the next moment her figure shifted and Saori transformed into an adult woman.

“Saori, it’s really been forever since we last spoke. How many years has it been? Gosh, just how old are you now?”

“What are you saying? We’re both the same age.” Saori flashed her pretty teeth as she laughed.

I flashed back from the figure of the adult Saori to her fluttering, shimmering younger self.

“Anyway, come in. Though, the place is a complete mess.”

I didn’t say that to be humble. The interior of the house was in a completely absurd state.

“I’m not intruding, am I?”

“Not at all. I was just sitting around alone feeling sorry for myself. I’m glad to see you!”

“Um. So, are you living alone, perhaps?” Saori gave a strained smile as she stepped over a cardboard box that had been left in the entryway.

“Yes. Ever since my father died, there hasn’t been any money coming in so all the employees stopped coming. Well, the inheritance I was left was quite substantial, so I’ve had no problems keeping myself fed.” I said defensively.

“Huh, so you got an inheritance like that, I’m jealous.”

“It’s not like that. Almost all of it went to taxes…… There’s also a clinic on the same property as this house, but it’s completely wasted on me.” I sighed.

“Just how many doctors and nurses do you think the clinic had?”

“Aah, at one time there were a great number of them but by the time of my fathers death there were only three nurses left. Those three nurses are all gone now, too. In my father’s final years he grew moody and tended to shun people. He couldn’t get along with the doctor’s either, so it seems they all left of their own accord.”

The parlour was tidier but, since Saori wanted to have a relaxed chat, we passed through to the living room.

“By the way, why did you come by today?”

We sat near-supine on the sofa, just like back in our student days.

“To tell you the truth, the topic of you came up the other day during our class reunion and I heard about your dad. It’s been over a year now, right? Since we knew your dad personally, it came as a shock to me and Yumiko. In truth both of us intended to come here today but, unfortunately, Yumiko’s mum got hospitalised.”

“Oh, Yumiko’s mother? What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s her liver. It’s getting transplanted.”

I stood up, pulled at my hair and screamed. It’s not that I’d lost my mind. But, for some reason, I couldn’t control myself. I was aware of my eyes growing wide, my ribs elevating and that my breathing was heavy. I was aware that my vocal cords were active. And yet, for the longest time, I couldn’t stop myself screaming.

Even so, Saori watched me calmly. Saori looked up at me as I made a flapping motion with my limbs. I’d probably lost control of my motor system. As expected, this situation only lasted a few seconds before Saori suddenly stood up, placed her hands on my shoulders, and began violently shaking me.

“What’s wrong, Yuka?! Snap out of it! Tell me what’s going on!!”

Miraculously, the moment I heard Saori’s words, I regained control of my body again. Strength drained from my entire body and I started shivering. Somehow, I managed to sit down on the sofa.

“Are you okay? I wonder if I said something I shouldn’t have.” Saori said, bewildered.

“Uuuungh. Sorry. That was a shock. I also have no idea what just happened. That was the first time this has happened. I was sorting out the research materials my father left behind, just now, and I guess it must have stirred up some painful, old memories?”

“Old memories?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about that today. Putting that aside, say, your last name changed. Tell me, what kind of person is Tanuma-san?”

“Yuka, what’s your body’s condition been like lately?” Saori ignored my question. “If you’re not able to do something like organising your dad’s research material, why don’t you just have someone else handle all of that?”

“As you can see, my body is in perfect condition. See for yourself how healthy I am.”

There was a momentary silence. It didn’t seem like there was any shock nor fear in Saori’s eyes.

“Well, then, you haven’t realised it yourself, then, Yuka.”

“Haven’t realised? What are you talking about?”

“Hold on a moment.” Saori rooted around in her handbag and pulled out a compact mirror. “Take a look at your own face. What does it look like?”

“It looks how it always does.”

“I haven’t seen you in forever so I can’t say for sure, but at the very least it seems to me that your face has become incredibly worn out, Yuka.”

Worn out?

I snatched up the mirror from Saori and stared at my own face without blinking. There were a few conspicuous wrinkles here and there, but I didn’t think I looked worn out.

“Maybe it’s because the lights are too bright, but I can’t see anything?”

“Yuka, have you been eating properly?”

“Yes. However, I’ve been eating in moderation. I can’t let myself get fat.” I let out a sigh. “I won’t let myself put on any more weight.”

“Your complexion looks healthy but… Can you show me your arm for a second?”

Just as Saori said, I presented her my arm. Saori sucked in a breath.

“Your bones and veins are sticking out. If you really have been eating properly, then you’re probably ill. Yuka, has a doctor had a look at you recently?”

I looked at my own arm and compared it to Saori’s arm, trying to grasp what she was saying. Certainly my arm was slightly thin but not so thin that I’d think it was sickly. In contrast, Saori’s arm looked flabby and plump and filled me discomfort. Of course, Saori didn’t care if she was fat.  But, I absolutely refused to get fat. Being slightly thinner was ideal for me.

“No. Ever since I was born, my father would perform examinations on me, however now that my father has passed on, I haven’t had any contact with doctors whatsoever.”

“That’s not good. I’m sure there are, say, other doctors your dad knew personally.”  From Saori’s eyes, it didn’t look like she was joking. “Since your body isn’t norm… That is… Because your body is particular, it’s completely reckless for you to avoid seeing a doctor.”

My father was a famous doctor and his accomplishments were held in high esteem, but he had a poor social disposition and because the results of the majority of his research were never made public, his public relations were scarce. That father of mine had no friends he could entrust me to. My father probably didn’t care at all about what would happen to me after his death.

“I know my own body better than anybody else.” My tone was unintentionally stern. “Furthermore, I have a reason I’m trying to avoid gaining any more weight.”

“A reason? What reason?” Overwhelmed by my forcefulness, Saori’s voice grew quieter.

“My body has pig all throughout it. As such, if my body gets even the slightest, tiniest bit closer to a pig’s, it’ll return to being a pig in the blink of an eye.”

“Eh? What are you talking about? Humans can’t turn into pigs!”

“Do you really believe that? I’m a human swine. If I’m not careful, I could instantly trip up and go from person to pig.”

“You’re not a human swine, Yuka, you’re clearly a fully-fledged human!”

I smirked. As I thought, Saori didn’t understand anything. She hadn’t acknowledged reality.

“‘Human’s can’t turn into pigs.’ Isn’t that what you said just now?”

“Yes. That’s right.” Saori nodded.

“Well then, what about the opposite? Can a pig turn into a human?”

“It’s the same for both. Living beings can’t just arbitrarily change their species as they please.”

“So you think that a pig that possesses a human heart is still a pig?”

“Eh? What do you mean?” Saori glanced around.

“I mean exactly what I said.”

“You mean if a human heart was transplanted into a pig? There’s no way that could happen.”

“An a posteriori transplant wouldn’t work, but what about an a priori transplant?” I snorted in exasperation with how dull Saori’s mind was.

“An a priori transplant?”

“Genetic recomposition. If pigs and humans are the finished products, then genes are equivalent to a blueprint. I’m not talking about swapping parts out from the finished products, but if the blueprint for a human heart was slipped into the blueprint of a pig from the very outset.”

“But I don’t really get it.” Saori cocked her head. “Doesn’t the law forbid things like that?”

“The law has nothing to do with this. No matter what, even if it’s forbidden by law, as long as it’s technically feasible, someone is guaranteed to do it. No. It’s already been done. Do you think that pig has human rights, Saori?”

“Probably… not, I think.”

“Well, then. What about that pig’s heart? Does the heart have human rights?”

“A body part can’t have human rights. To the very end, human rights should only apply to an entire human body. If that wasn’t the case, having an organ removed would create two people — the person and the removed organ — each with their own individual rights. Besides, I think a pig’s heart is a pig’s heart, no matter what. Even if it’s been implanted with a human heart’s genetics, there’s the pig genes within every single individual cell used to form that heart. For example, if you used cells from that heart to make a clone, it wouldn’t turn into a human, instead another pig with a human heart would be born, so I still think it’s a pig.”

“My heart is a pig’s heart.” I sneered.

“But parts don’t matter. Your heart might be a pig’s, but as long as your entire body is a human’s, you receive human rights. That’s just common sense.”

“Does a pig that possesses a human liver have human rights?”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? The parts don’t matter. If it’s in a pig’s body, no matter if it has a human heart or a hippopotamus’ heart, it’s still a pig!”

“So, then is a human that possesses the heart and liver of a pig a human? Or a pig?”

“How many times are you planning on asking me the same goddamn thing!? As I thought, you’re kind of screwed up in the head, Yuka.”

“If the heart from a pig with a human heart, the liver from a pig with a human liver, the kidneys from a pig with human kidneys, the lungs from a pig with human lungs, the large intestine from a pig with a human large intestine, the eyeballs from a pig with human eyeballs, the anus from a pig with a human anus, the skin from a pig with human skin, the womb from a pig with a human womb, the hands and feet from a pig with human hands and feet, the spinal cord from a pig with a human spinal cord, the stomach from a pig with a human stomach, the ears from a pig with human ears, the ribcage from a pig with a human ribcage, the thyroid gland from a pig with a human thyroid gland, and the ovaries from a pig with human ovaries were all combined to form a human being, would that be a human?” I said in a tone like I was trying to persuade Saori.

“You couldn’t create a human like that.” Saori averted her eyes.

“How can you say that? I’m standing in front of you right now!”

“You weren’t cobbled together from pig parts, Yuka. You simply had the defective parts of your body replaced, right?”

“It’s just like an appliance which is breaking down all over. Little by little, its parts are replaced and then eventually all of its old parts are completely gone. Can you really say that its the same thing which you started with?”

“The human body is always renewing its cells, so you could say that the human body is constantly replacing itself.” Saori seemed like she was desperately looking for a way out. “Every several years, it’s a brand new body. But not matter how many years pass, I am me and Yuka is Yuka. That remains the same.”

“But your cells don’t have pig genes in them. Mine do. If you were to use any of my skin cells for cloning, a piglet would be born. Unless they were from here!” I tore my clothes and showed off the dark-red, fish-head-shaped birthmark on my shoulder.

“You have the continuity of character we call Yuka.”

“How do you understand it enough to say that, Saori? Even I don’t really understand it.”

Saori covered her face with her hands. She was searching desperately for the right words.

“That’s right,” She removed her hands and gazed into my eyes. “Your brain. Right! Because of your brain. If your heart dies but your brain is still alive, you’re not dead so just as long as the brain is human, you’re human. Even if your other body parts are entirely replaced with pigs’, if the brain is Yuka’s, you’re Yuka. That’s how it is. It’s something that’s in the brain.”

“So you’re saying that the brain is the essence of a human.” I shook my head. “That’s nothing more than a convenient assumption you’re making. Human death is defined by brain death because the process is irreversible, not because it is the essence of a human. There’s no grounds to claim that you’re human as long as you have a human brain, and that everything else is completely irrelevant. Besides, Saori, you seem to think the brain is an organ that’s impossible to divide.”

“Divide? You can divide the brain?”

“The brain isn’t a simple thing, it has a complex structure. Every single part of it has a specific function. Though, obviously, we haven’t yet managed to elucidate how all of it works.”

“But the brain holds your personality.”

“What is a personality? If the right half of my brain was replaced with half of your brain, would I become you? Or would I still be me? Where does human consciousness reside in the brain?”

“Something like that brain swapping surgery could never happen!”

“Are you bringing up the law and ethics again? Bringing up social standards has no bearing on the question of whether or not it’s possible. If it’s technically possible, sooner or later, someone will do it.”

“It’d never happen, no matter how you look at it…”

“Six months after my birth, part of my cerebral cortex was transplanted. I wasn’t able to understand which part and how much of it from reading my father’s data, however that part was grafted in successfully and it looks like it confirms that it could form neural paths between future braincells. I don’t know what the true nature of personality and consciousness is, but if it’s the neural circuits within the brain, then my consciousness has a pigs mixed into it.”

“Yuka, do you feel like anything is abnormal within you?”

“Hmmm. I don’t feel anything. But by the time I was cognisant of my surroundings, pig braincells were already part of my brain. Even if my consciousness was a pig’s consciousness, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. In order to determine whether my consciousness is a human consciousness or a pig’s consciousness, I would need to know what a normal human’s consciousness is like, something like experiencing the consciousness of other people is something I’ll never be able to do.” I looked at Saori absentmindedly. “Or would you like to swap half of your brain with me? In that case, we could check the contents of each other’s consciousnesses.”

“Yuka, you need to stop organising your dad’s research right away. You’re not normal right now. I’m sure you’re misunderstanding the documents. There’s absolutely no way that someone would do something so horrific to their own child.”

“But, for my father, it doesn’t seem like it was horrific in the least. Besides, from the very beginning, this is the purpose he raised me for. From my father’s perspective, I was just another piece of experiment material.”

“There’s no way that’s true. If he raised you for the sake of experimenting on you, it makes no sense that he never released his data to the public and instead kept it hidden. If he never publically releases the experiment data, it’s not any kind of experiment whatsoever. That’s why that surgery never happened. You’re misunderstanding, Yuka, or else it was your dad’s simulation of theoretical transplant surgeries. Look, it’s what’s called a thought experiment.”

“No. If it was a simulation, the same contents would have been repeated over and over again. There is only one recording of each of the surgeries.”

“I understand. For the sake of the argument, let’s suppose that all of the transplant surgeries you’ve uncovered were purely experimental. Even if that’s the case, the surgeries happened because they were necessary. So, out of consideration for your happiness, those surgeries were concealed. That’s the only theory that makes sense.”

“Right. That’s something I don’t know. For what purpose did my father perform those experiments? If it was to become famous, announcing several surgeries alone would already have been enough, why did he need to perform hundreds more?”

“Yuka, why are you continuing to organise your dad’s research material?” Saori’s questions piled up once more. “Do you want to think that you’re a human swine?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well then, stop organising your father’s documents right now, alright?” Saori uttered in a stern voice.

“That’s not how this works. There’s something I need to know, but I have absolutely no idea what it is or why that is. As things are, if I was to stop now, I’d be forced to spend my entire life in a state of limbo. My entire life I’ve anguished over whether or not I’m a human swine, and I’ve had to live with that trepidation. That sort of thing is unendurable. Through these research documents, I can confirm whether or not I’m a human.”

“I understand.” Saori stood up. “For the time being, I’m going to go home for today. I realise that I’m not going to be able to persuade you alone, Yuka…… Hey. All you need to do is stop organising your dad’s research and go to the hospital. If that’s too much to ask, at least stop with the dieting.”

“I don’t think I can convince you, but my diet isn’t unreasonable. This is my limit. Any more than this and I’ll get fat. Sometimes, I can see a pig reflected in the mirror.”

Saori silently turned to the door, slunk over to it and left. I turned away, just as silently.

“Next time, I’ll come back with Yumiko. Even if it might not be actual therapy, I think if the both of us carefully listen to your problems, a pathway will open up.” While she opened the door, I could hear Saori speak in a tender voice. “I was way too impatient today. I wanted you to get better fast, so I did nothing but argue against what you were saying, Yuka. Next time, I won’t just deny everything you’re saying, Yuka, we’ll think it through together. So, is it alright if I come back again?”

“You’re always welcome here.” I responded, with my head that was still hot from my argument with Saori trembling slightly. “I’m ashamed for showing you just how pigheaded I am.”

Of course, meeting up with Saori and Yumiko seemed like fun, however I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that speaking with the both of them about the burdens I carry could lead to a resolution. It hadn’t clearly been decided when the two of them would visit me, but from the way Saori spoke I could tell she wasn’t just being diplomatic, she meant it. When it happens, it won’t be an unpleasant meeting like today, I want it to be a harmonious and meaningful discussion between friends, just like the old days. I need to find the answer to my questions before that day arrives.

With hardened resolve, I headed to my father’s room. Nevertheless, no matter how hard I grit my teeth, unstoppable sobs came from the back of my throat like I was a new-born baby. Drop by drop, my tears fell in a trail down the corridor.

Empress Lü looked at my face and smiled sweetly. Her clothes were incredibly ancient in style and so gorgeous and refined that it was hard to believe, however her entire body was veiled in a mist-like, red spray. As I got closer, I smelled blood. Empress Lü didn’t move a single inch, but those swelling clothes trembled and swayed.

“Girl, one’s own aroma is a lovely thing.” Empress Lü said to me.

I disregarded Empress Lü’s words and as I drew even closer to her, I caught a better look at her face. I had been certain that Empress Lü was smiling at me, but I couldn’t see her face clearly because of the rays of light. However, whenever I got closer my eyes would flicker and I could never ascertain her facial features.

Again, I took another step towards Empress Lü and trod on something elastic and sticky. It seemed to be a bundled up mass of meat smeared in filth. The repulsive thing began to roll around and tremble violently.

Empress Lü undid the front of her kimono. Blood splattered everywhere, drenching me and the lump of meat. Empress Lü’s naked body was beautiful but it couldn’t help giving off a foul stench.

I retreated trying to flee from Empress Lü but I lost my footing in the gore, there was a large sound, and I collapsed. And before I knew it, I was also stripped bare.

As the lump of meat crawled towards me, I tried to cover myself. I writhed trying to escape, I was confined by my body that was slick with blood.

At that moment, Empress Lü picked me up in her arms. Empress Lü’s skin stuck to mine.

“Come now, assist me.”

Empress Lü slid down and lay sprawled out on the ground facing the sky. Dark brown liquid the colour of burnt tea flowed out from within a crevice in her white belly. Through the mouth of the wound, I could see something wriggling around.

Without hesitation, I thrust both of my arms inside Empress Lü. My hands grasped something within her. I let out an animalistic voice and pulled it out.

Slowly, from within that thing that looked like mud, I made out the shape of a human being.

In shock, I threw it to the floor.

It surged up and trampled upon the lump of meat.

“Lo, beauteous, are you not?” With her womb still dangling from her abdomen, Empress Lü clasped it to her chest.

“Prithee, look, Your Excellency. ” Without even attempting to hide her torn body, Empress Lü called out to it. “This is a human swine.”

It looked at the lump of flesh, screaming, crying and writhing in filth.

“Aah, this is no human, this is no human.” It said.

After a while, it started to crumble and returned to mud.

Empress Lü then laid face down on top of it and twisted her body around. Empress Lü’s abdomen then sucked up the mud into her womb. “Ah, overjoying, is it not? I can once again give birth to His Excellency.”

“Why did you call Consort Qi a human swine?” I posed my question of many years to Empress Lü. “She couldn’t hear, and she couldn’t see, either. No matter what you said to her, it couldn’t hurt her anymore. Even so, was it still out of revenge?”

Empress Lü opened up her mouth wide. She opened it far too wide until it exposed the contents of her stomach. And then, she let out a booming laugh.

“Why are you doing that? Have you got something wrong with you?” I looked back and forth between Empress Lü and the lump of meat, comparing them.

“Just who in the world is Consort Qi?” Empress Lü continued laughing.

“This woman. This poor, pathetic woman who received hideous treatment at your hand.” I tried holding the lump of meat up to Empress Lü to show her, but it was too slimy and it kept slipping out of my arms.

“That is not Consort Qi nor any one of her kind.”

“Eh?! Then just who is it?!”

“That is the real you.”

In shock, I tore apart the lump of meat. There was nothing inside. It wasn’t a flesh lump, it was a flesh bag.

“The form of your true self has lost both it’s exterior and its contents.” Empress Lü laughed.

“If this is the true me……” I let go of the flesh bag. “Just what the fuck am I?”

“You are the hide of a swine.” Empress Lü showed me a single pig.

The pig had no skin, it’s blubber and muscles were completely bare.

I crumpled to the ground.

Empress Lü’s face was my father’s face.

I finally understood. Why Empress Lü called Consort Qi a human swine. And why my father raised me.

It wasn’t because Empress Lü wanted revenge. If her goal was revenge, she would have called her a human swine before butchering her eyes and ears.

Furthermore, my father didn’t desire fame as a researcher. If he wanted fame, he would have performed more reasonable transplant surgeries and published his success.

They did it because it was fun. Tearing a human’s dignity to shreds, toying around with the lives of swines and humans, the sensation of omnipotence is violent.

I barely slept, I read notes, watched videos, investigated hard drives.

Without fail, they contained secrets my father had covered up. For my father, raising a human being into a pig was fun, in itself. In that case, I wonder what other sacrilege he committed besides the transplants.

However, the majority of his research materials were about me and all incomprehensibly cryptic. After feeling nothing but anxiety, going however many days without sleep, and skipping however many meals, I may no longer be recognisable.

At that time, I spotted one particular video. It was the same as any other video, there was nothing unusual about how it looked, but I noticed the characters written on the label. There were plenty of videos with labels like “A-1” or “1Q” and such, but this video’s label just read “1.”

As the number of videos increase, anyone would write their labels in easy to understand language for the sake of organisation. However, in cases where the same work is spread out over several volumes or where several works are collected in a single volume, rather than writing down the contents directly, it’s more reasonable to classify each volumes specific contents by serial number or by recording the date. Furthermore, as the serial-numbered videos increase, you will want to organise their contents. By alphabetising the numbers, using English letters and Roman numerals.

As a result, the possibility that this video simply labelled “1” was a video recording of the very initial stages of the project was extremely high.

As the video came to life, I felt the seed of a premonition. If this really was the very first video, then it could tell me what my father was doing — or, rather, what he was trying to do. That was still more than I could bear, furthermore I had a vague recollection of a memory before it became a memory — I felt like I grasped a glimpse of the secret that bound me and my father together.

The very first seconds of the video were in an indiscernible disarray, but then it abruptly became unbelievably clear. A single pig lay in the dead centre of the video. I couldn’t really tell what breed it was, though not because my father had toyed with its genetics; it seemed like an ordinary pig.

The pig was lying down in pain. Occasionally, it let out a cry. Was it ill, I wondered? Soon after, it became clear that it wasn’t ill. From the pig, a body wrapped in mucous was born. After that, the video displayed the sow endlessly giving birth to a continuous littler of piglets.

In comparison to the normal sow, the piglets had clearly received my father’s treatment. If you hadn’t seen the sow give brith to them, you wouldn’t have thought they were pigs at all. Despite their appearance the sow still seemed to love them, as she diligently licked her babies. The piglets huddled against their mother’s body as if they were trying to burrow back into her abdomen. Despite the appearance of the piglets, I unconsciously smiled gently at the scene as if there was nothing abnormal about it.

The piglets didn’t resemble any animals whatsoever. They obviously had mammalian features, but on the whole they gave off the impression that they were incredibly unfinished. They tried to get closer to their mother but, without their mother’s help, it looked like they were entirely unable to move on their own. It didn’t seem like they would be able to grow to adulthood. Victims of my father’s curiosity.

The sow resumed giving birth to piglets. It was too much for me and I went pause the tape. However, for some reason, I was unable to bring my finger to the stop button, let alone press it.

I had an uneasy premonition. Something on the screen was urging on my subconscious. It was like I was seeing one of those shady subliminal messages that people used to make such a fuss over. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

The screen froze. I checked back frame-by-frame. No mysterious messages had been spliced into the footage. Again, I resumed the normal playback. Then I hit fast-forward. As I thought, something felt off. It wasn’t because the piglets were malformed. I could clearly recognise that on the conscious level. It was something much smaller. Something reflected within the screen.

As soon as I realised what it was, I regretted it bitterly. What possessed me to watch this video? Why did I ever think to organise my father’s research materials? In the first place, why didn’t I just meekly believe everything my father said?

It’s too late. It’s all over. I know the truth.

Aah, I’ll never forget what my father said before he died.

“Idiot! You say it’s liver cancer! So what?! You’re not going to put those swine guts in me! Filthy!!”

If I hadn’t heard those words, I could have continued believing my father’s lies.

My father taught the world that there was nothing filthy about having pig organs transplanted into you. Thanks to that, every year countless human lives are saved. That father of mine is hailed as a modern hero.  Why would anyone believe that man spewed such words?

However, I’m certain my father always held contempt for me. The human swine he raised.

I found myself lying down on a hospital bed. In a hospital room I didn’t recognise. From the moment I was born until this year, the only hospital room I’d known was the one inside my own home, so when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t grasp what was happening and I was in a state of confusion. However, I recognised Saori and Yumiko’s faces directly across from me and I was able to calm back down.

They both had visited my house on a rainy day. They told me it had been a week after Saori had previously visited me. I didn’t know what day I had met with Saori, nor how many days had passed since I’d continued organising my father’s research. Nor did I know how many days had passed since I’d watched that revolting video. My memories were strangely jumbled. I couldn’t remember if I’d continued organising my father’s research material after watching the video, or if I’d thrown everything out.

According to Saori and Yumiko, they found me out in the pouring rain, wallowing in the mud in the garden. I’d screamed something out, but neither of them could remember the contents. Although, there’s no way to know if they’ve actually forgot.

“You gave us a real shock.” Yumiko told me in a slightly agitated tone. “At first, I thought you were some kind of animal. But then Saori let out a shriek and then I also realised it was you.”

While soaking wet, the two of them tried to carry me back into the house but they didn’t know where the key was so they gave up on that. (Later, the key was discovered within my intestines.) With no other options, they called an ambulance.

I can’t comment on their testimonies. However, I have a hazy recollection of meeting Empress Lü and Consort Qi but I’m not sure what meaning that has.

“You’d overworked yourself. The doctors also said it was caused by extreme fatigue and malnutrition. Hey. I know I’ve said it a lot, but why don’t you forget about organising your dad’s research for a while and slowly get your strength back?” Saori said in a tender voice.

“Yeah. I also think that’d be for the best.” I did my best to respond as clearly as I could.

That’s right. I have no intention of organising those documents ever again. After I return home, I’ll never go near my father’s room ever again. The truth is I want to throw out all my father’s research completely, however at this point in time I wouldn’t be able to endure seeing or touching anything in there. On the other hand, it’s not something I can trust other people to dispose of for me. All I have to do is think about other people seeing what’s in there to feel a sense of dread so intense I can hardly breathe.

I’ll be glad if I never have to see it again. Perhaps then I might be able to believe that what I saw was nothing but a dream. If such a blissful time ever arrives, I’ll be sure to never do something so foolish as looking in there ever again.

I wanted to thoroughly investigate the past, believing that if the entire truth was dug up before my very eyes that it would set my soul free from its suffering. But I had it backwards. While it remained sealed, I was blessed for I was able to be myself.

Saori and Yumiko come and visit me every day. I wonder if they’ve noticed that I’m steadily losing weight and withering away?

My tranquil everyday life will never return. Whether my eyes are open or closed, I can’t escape the image that plays on repeat within my head.

On the screen is a large sow. Malformed piglets swarm her teats. In the centre, a particularly small one lets out a frail cry.

And on its shoulder is a dark-red birthmark shaped like the head of a fish.

*「人獣細工」 more accurately translates to "Tampering with humans and animals", but that doesn't sound very good as a title. I think my choice still conveys the feel and ideas of the original title while sounding more natural.