Chapter Four - Part One

––According to your diary, the murders will occur in that order.

Kamo typed into the notepad app on his phone. Ayaka's face stiffened as she wrote in her own notebook.

––Tonight, the culprit will target Great-Uncle Soujirou, and Ms. Tonegawa the night after that. What then?

––There are no records for the 25th on.

––I see. There's no way I could have left a diary entry the day of the landslide.

After the landslide, the search and rescue team was able to recover five bodies: Koki, Kyuichi, Soujirou, Tonegawa, and Ayaka. With the exception of Ayaka herself, all of them had injuries or mutilations consistent with what was written in her diary. As for the others, the scale of the destruction meant there was no chance there had been any survivors.

In addition, according to a former police officer who'd worked on the incident, the police believed the survivors had all been outside the villa at the time of the incident. If they had been inside, there would have been better odds they'd be recovered from the wreckage, but with the exception of Ayaka, who'd fled to higher ground, it was believed that the bodies of all the others outside had been swept far away by the earth.

But Kamo decided not to tell Ayaka any of that. It was just too horrible.

The two of them were currently hiding in the cleaning supplies room on the second floor.

The room was right next to the baggage lift, directly across from the Tiger Room. The clock on his smartphone had been set to local time, so the 10:24 P.M. displayed on screen was the correct local time “here”.

The inside of the cleaning supplies room was dimly lit, illuminated only by the light coming from under the door.

––Soujirou is supposed to be attacked in the Tiger Room, so as long as we keep an eye on the door, we can nab the culprit red-handed.

Although he typed that, being in a place like this at night with a middle school girl wasn't a good look for Kamo or Ayaka.

––By the way, do you want to go back to your room now?

––I thought about it, but my room isn't positioned well for keeping watch.

––No no, I meant that there's no way you can be allowed to spend the night alone with a middle-aged man.

If they were found out, the entire Ryuuzen clan would immediately declare Kamo a sex offender. Despite that, Ayaka looked disappointed and replied:

––Great-Uncle's life is at stake. If you keep going on about this, I'll scream. Do you want me to give your entire plan away?

Kamo sighed deeply. He knew she didn't mean it. She was just saying whatever she could to keep from having to leave. Even if it did sound like extortion.

There was another reason it was hard for Kamo to turn Ayaka away. That was because staying with Kamo might have been the safest thing she could do right now.

What if the culprit saw Ayaka outside the Rat Room? If they thought her actions were suspicious, they might kill her. It seemed like leaving her alone might put her in danger.

––I get it. Do whatever you want.

Kamo typed that on his phone, keeping his eyes on the bottom of the door as much as possible.

There was a gap of a few centimeters under the door of the cleaning supplies room. Looking through that gap into the hallway, they could clearly see the Tiger Room. If the door to any room on the upstairs was opened, or if someone came up the stairs, they'd definitely hear.

It was the best place for covert surveillance.

The room was about two and a half square meters, and on each side were shelves stocked with, as the name suggested, cleaning supplies, including brooms, deck brushes, and detergent. There was even a washing area with running water in the back. Although there was a lot kept inside, there was a space near the door set aside for work, so they had room to keep watch.

...Already, several hours had passed, but no one had come from or to the Tiger Room. Kamo tried keeping the blood flowing to his hand by fiddling with the hourglass pendant. Next to him, Ayaka began to run her ballpoint pen over her notebook.

––Do you want some konpeito?

When she finished writing, Kamo furrowed his brows. Ayaka pulled out her pocket watch. She scratched at the back for a moment, and there was a small pop as the back came off.

––I recommend the red ones.

Cute little red and white konpeito candies peeked out at him.

There was a small storage space in the back of the pocket watch, which she had appeared to fill with konpeito. The space was large enough to hold five pieces of candy.

––What, you can hide things in your watch?

Kamo stifled a laugh as he typed. Ayaka, despite looking disappointed, popped a red konpeito in her mouth.

––Grandfather had it custom made to hold his medicine.

Kamo gestured “no thanks”. Ayaka put away her pocket watch, put her serious face back on, and started writing again.

––I wonder why the culprit did such a horrible thing as mutilating the bodies.

––I have a theory I'm pretty confident in, but I haven't quite sorted everything yet... Decapitation is a staple body-swap trick, where one corpse is replaced with another. It's a pretty old-school trick, though.

––It is?

Seeing Ayaka's puzzled response, Kamo smiled.

In 2018, when forensic science was a developed field, no one would attempt a swapped corpses trick. If the body were subjected to a DNA test, it would be seen through immediately... but in 1960, it was a different story. It wouldn't be surprising for a culprit from this era to view swapping the corpses as a viable trick.

––No matter what happens, the one constant is change.

––I don't know what the future holds, but I don't think this is a “headless corpse” situation. Father and Mr. Koki both had their heads found.

Kamo noticed that her handwriting was getting shaky, and tears were forming in her eyes. He typed quickly.

––Don't push yourself. If it's too painful, we can talk about something else.

––No. I want to find out who did this. That's why I want to help Mr. Kamo solve the case. I have to become strong, for Father's sake.

Perhaps subconsciously, she echoed what she'd written in her own diary. Then, as though she'd just thought of something, Ayaka began writing.

––Maybe the culprit did all that to conceal the murder weapon.

Kamo remembered how both of the victims' necks had been torn to shreds. There were distinctive marks left where the killer had strangled them, so it was possible they'd been decapitated in an attempt to hide them.

––But if it was just to disguise those traces, it's strange that Koki's body was mutilated in several other places.

––You're right. We won't know the truth until we find out how they got the head and torso outside.

Ayaka drew a floorplan of the villa in her notebook, then drew a large circle near the back door.

––You can get as far as the end of the stones by the back door without leaving any footprints. I wonder if the culprit threw the body parts from there to the underground garden? Maybe they wrapped them in waterproof cloth or something.

As she'd said, not far from the back door was the stone staircase leading down to the underground garden. Kamo contemplated if it would be possible to take advantage of the two meter height difference to the underground.

––That's impossible. If a body were thrown down a two meter hole, there would be some kind of mark left from the fall. But there weren't any marks like that on the bodies.

––What if they looped a rope from the back door to the lattice on the window in the baths? I think you could collect the rope from either the basement or back door side.

Kamo was surprised. Ayaka had come up with a brute force trick that used a ropeway to move a package of body parts.

He thought for another moment, then shook his head.

––There were no signs that a rope had been tied to the lattice on the bath window, or any signs that it had been rubbed by something heavy. I think moving the torso, in particular, would be impossible.

The human head is heavier than it looks, averaging around four kilograms, and the torso would easily have been over 20. It was inconceivable that something like that could have been moved without leaving any traces on the bars.

Ayaka looked disappointed to have her idea rejected, but she turned back to her sketch. She had drawn all twelve of the private rooms.

Ten people had gathered for Taiga's birthday. Apart from the rooms of Kyuichi and Koki, which were both now empty, there were two other empty rooms.

The Boar room had been reserved for Ikeuchi, the opera singer.

She was one of the few people to escape the curse of the Ryuuzen clan. It may have been because she'd divorced Soujirou early on, so her connection to the clan was weak.

The other was the Rabbit Room.

No one had been willing to talk about that room, but the way Soujirou and Taiga had spoken, Kamo got the vibe that it wasn't available for some reason.

For a while after, Kamo and Ayaka's written conversation ceased.

Kamo, keeping a watchful eye on the corridor, began to reminisce about what had happened that evening.

...Kamo had been offered the Boar Room to stay in, and Amamiya gave him a key with a boar netsuke on it. Unfortunately, the Boar Room was on the first floor, so he couldn't guard a second floor room from there.

Once he got the key, everyone had locked their doors and began to prepare dinner.

Kamo had looked in the storage room and been surprised to see two refrigerators.

The Three Sacred Treasures that had achieved rapid popularity in the 1950s... the black and white TV, the electric washing machine, and the electric refrigerator. They were white boxes with silver handles.

Out of curiosity, Kamo looked in the two refrigerators. Unlike modern versions, these only had one door each, but they still had small freezer compartments inside. One was full of fruits and vegetables, the other held meat and fish.

However, it seemed even one fridge was out of reach for the common man. According to Amamiya, one of them would have cost two months salary for an average household...

It was decided that multiple people would cook dinner while monitoring each other for suspicious behavior. Tonegawa, Tsukie, and Amamiya, who were good at cooking, did most of the work, while everyone else except Taiga were assigned to supervise them.

However, not everyone was in the kitchen at all times.

Amamiya had to go consult with Taiga about something, so he left the kitchen for a spell, and Tsukie also stepped out on a break at one point. The supervisors, too, stepped out, as Genji left on a few separate smoke breaks, perhaps out of concern for Ayaka, who hated the smell of smoke, and Tsukihiko barely ever set foot in the kitchen to begin with.

The only people who properly monitored the cooks were Ayaka, Kamo, and Soujirou.

Taiga, who had changed into a brown jinbei, arrived in the dining room a bit before 7:00 P.M. and made small talk with Kamo. Kamo didn't know the first thing about what was going on in 1960, so he had no choice but to play the role of passive listener.

At 7:15, dinner was served.

As Tonegawa and Amamiya explained, today's meal was... tomato and grilled eggplant with ponzu sauce, cheese omelettes, sautéed beef fillet, French bread, and assorted fruits.

Since three cooks were in the kitchen, each with their own specialties, the final meal had ended up a bit disjointed. Still, for Kamo, who had been living on cup noodles and microwave dinners since Rena was hospitalized, it was an impossibly lavish meal.

Near the end of dinnertime, Taiga gave an order. “None of you leave your rooms tonight.” This also matched what had been written in Ayaka's diary.

As they drank their after dinner coffee, Tonegawa and Amamiya cleaned up, finishing around 8:15. When Taiga saw the two of them return from the kitchen, he looked at his watch, then left the dining room without a word.

According to Ayaka, that was pretty normal.

It seemed that Taiga always returned to his room before 8:30. Immediately after he left the dining room, a sound like creaking metal echoed throughout the house. That must have been the sound of the wheelchair lift.

Kamo had planned to follow Taiga out of the dining room, but Soujirou and Amamiya suddenly bombarded him with questions. Soujirou in particular seemed anxious about the situation and was eager to get as much information out of the assigned detective as he could. Kamo was forced to spend about 20 minutes talking to the two. But he still managed to be the first person to leave the room after Taiga.

As he climbed the stairs, Kamo saw the steel plate of the wheelchair lift on the second floor.

Before dinner, he'd seen it on the first floor, so there could be no doubt that the old man had gone upstairs.

Near the stairs on the second floor, several oil paintings had been propped up. The space appeared to be used as a temporary storage area for the paintings. The painting directly in front of him was a still life of fruits such as apples and mangoes.

Kamo saw some sort of metal object and a red blanket in the gap behind an oil painting, but he was in too much of a hurry to think much of it. He passed the baggage lift with its closed bellows door and quickly entered the cleaning supplies room.

Just as he thought he'd finally have a chance to settle down, Ayaka appeared in the hallway.

Considering the timing, she must have left the dining room less than a minute after him. She went right past the cleaning supplies room and into her bedroom, but quickly returned with a cushion and joined Kamo.

A few minutes later, Genji came upstairs and entered the Ox Room. According to Kamo's smartphone, that was at 8:44.

After that, he and Ayaka had kept observing, and at 9:13, Tsukihiko returned to the Snake Room and locked the door behind him. Five minutes later, Soujirou also entered the Tiger Room.

There were only three rooms left on the second floor.

Tsukihiko, who was slippery and had a ruthless aura, was the snake, and Soujirou, who was a dangerous man who constantly carried a rifle, was the tiger... Kamo dedicated the connections to memory.

There were only three rooms left on the second floor.

The unoccupied Rabbit Room, the Dragon Room, where Taiga was staying, and the Rat Room, which was Ayaka's.

It seemed like everyone who had a room on the second floor was accounted for, so Kamo decided to wait for the culprit to make their move. There was every possibility they wouldn't do so right away, so he prepared for a long battle.



Kamo thought he saw Ayaka glance at him, but then she sent her pen moving again.

––By the way, earlier you said you had an idea about why the bodies were cut up. What was it?

Kamo, who was also starting to get bored, ran his finger across his phone.

––Sorry, guess I forgot to explain. I haven't been able to make sense of everything yet, but... I think the culprit is committing an imitation crime.

Ayaka stared at him in shock.

––You mean there's going to be a murder based off of Mother Goose?

It seemed Ayaka was familiar with Van Dine's “The Bishop Murder Case”. It was one of the earliest works to feature imitation murders, based on “Who Killed Cock Robin?”, “Humpty Dumpty”, and other classic nursery rhymes.

––Something like that... Do you remember the painting hanging in the rec room?

––Chimera. It's Grandfather's most treasured painting.

––That painting depicts a creature made of parts from various different animals. But the actual Chimera of Greek mythology has the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a snake.

The girl tilted her head.

––But that creature's head doesn't look like a lion's, and its body isn't like a goat's either.

––The artist spells their pseudonym “Night Bird”. That could be a clue to the monster's true identity. Ayaka, have you ever heard of the Nue?

––What's that?

––A while ago, I had to research it for a job for an occult magazine... I have no idea what people see in stuff like that. Anyway, I did some research on the Nue.

His memory let him recall it easily.

––The Nue has the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the tail of a snake, the limbs of a tiger, and a cry like a thrush.

When Ayaka heard that, she started.

––The creature in the painting has a red face, a greyish-brown body, a snake's tail, and yellow and black striped limbs. It's the Nue.

––And “Nue” is written as 鵺, combining the characters for “Night” and “Bird” into a single kanji.

––So the artist's name, Yachō, is also a reference to the Nue.

Kamo went to reply, but before he could, he noticed Ayaka staring. Curious, he looked down at the screen of his smartphone and saw that new characters were already appearing on his screen.

––Kamo is referring to the monster shot down by Minamoto no Yorimasa, correct? The story is told in the Tale of the Heike and other works, although there are some interpretations in which the Nue was actually a completely different beast, unseen but for its cry.

Looking down at the text that had been typed without his permission, Kamo gave an ironic smile. After confirming that the “malfunction” had stopped, he typed a message.

––But generally speaking, that creature can be considered “the Nue”, right... Hora?

––Indeed. It has been a while.

The message appeared on the screen almost instantly.

“Where have you been?”

Hora ignored Ayaka's reflexive whisper and kept typing.

––It is quite dark in here. Ayaka appears to be struggling to read your messages. If you like, I can use the Hourglass to illuminate your surroundings. I can maintain the brightness level of your choice until morning.

––No! If you turn on the light, someone in the hall could see us.

––In that case, let us not... Oh, your phone's battery has grown quite low. The outlets “here” use almost the same standard, so why don't you charge it?

Kamo glanced nervously into the hallway as he typed.

––Will you quit interrupting us with irrelevant nonsense? If you want me to charge my phone, go get my charging cable from my car.

––Oh my, you left something in 2018? I was quite looking forward to having a pleasant chat.

Kamo shrugged slightly before going back to typing.

––Let's ignore this guy. About the imitation murders, I think the culprit is copying the form of the Nue.

Ayaka let out a small gasp. It seemed she was starting to see where he was going. Kamo continued.

––Kyuichi in the Monkey Room lost his head. Soujirou, who should be targeted tonight, is in the Tiger room, and he had both arms cut off. The next day, Tonegawa, from the Rooster Room, will have her throat cut. It's more of a stretch, but roosters and thrushes are both birds, and moreover, “Tsugumi”, her first name, is Japanese for thrush.

Hora flashed a light on the smartphone to get Kamo's attention, then began writing a new message.

––However, Koki was in the Dog Room, correct? That doesn't seem to match with tanuki.

––Yeah, that's the piece that doesn't fit.

––No. It's raccoon dog.

Kamo was surprised to see Ayaka suddenly write that. She didn't stop writing.

––The name of Mr. Koki's beloved Shiba Inu is “Raccoon”. In English, tanuki are called raccoon dogs.

Seeing the culprit kill and mutilate based on such a childish pun, Kamo felt a chill that froze his fingers in place. Hora took the chance to fire off another message.

––Allow me to write it in a way that's easy to understand.

Ryuuzen Kyuichi    Monkey Room (Monkey)    Head

Miyako Koki    Dog Room (Pet “Raccoon” + Dog = Raccoon Dog)    Torso

Ryuuzen Soujirou    Tiger Room (Tiger)    Arms

Tonegawa Tsugumi    Rooster Room (Bird or name meaning “thrush”)    Throat (Voice)

Kamo nodded and resumed typing.

––In that case, we can also figure out who will be targeted at midnight on the 24th. Since the only piece left is the snake, Tsukihiko in the Snake Room will be targeted... How did you decide on room allocation for this villa?

He asked because he suspected that the person in charge of assigning the rooms may have been the culprit. Ayaka seemed to understand his thoughts, and shook her head.

––Aside from the Dragon Room, which has always been Grandfather's, everyone else decided on their rooms together two years ago. Mr. Koki chose the dog room because he loves dogs, and Great-Uncle chose the Tiger Room because he's a fan of the Osaka Tigers. Incidentally, I chose the Rat Room for myself because the mouse netsuke was cute.

Now that Kyuichi was dead, there was no way to find out whether or not the culprit was involved in him getting his room.

At the same time, Kamo shuddered. He realized there was another possibility.

It could have been that the culprit was aiming to annihilate the entire Ryuuzen family. In that case, it didn't matter what room the victims or the culprit were in... All that would change was the order they were killed.

Kamo heard a noise like a motor from somewhere.

It wasn't the sound of the wheelchair lift, and it was accompanied by a dull vibration. It shook the hearts of those in the cleaning supplies room. Ayaka looked frightened as well, so Kamo could tell she'd never heard the sound before.

She wrote in a trembling hand.

––What was that?

––Maybe it was a tremor. They say things like that happen before a landslide.

Hora flashed the light on the phone again.

––Don't worry, the landslide definitely won't happen until the 25th... That said, weren't you clever today? You successfully infiltrated the Ryuuzen household and managed to ensure the safety of the next victim, Soujirou. So far, you've managed to exceed all of my expectations.

Kamo frowned at the praise, detecting an undercurrent of mockery. But Hora didn't have any more messages for them.

 

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