Chapter Seven: Main Island, Code Cracking (1)
Thursday, October 17, 2019, 8:35 A.M.
Before breakfast, the three who had gone to the Divine Land changed clothes and used water and wet wipes to wipe the dirt and grime off their bodies.
After freshening up, they ate a breakfast of instant noodles.
It was Yuki's job to make coffee to wake everyone up. They'd brought ten packs of paper cups, so he opened a new one just to be safe.
Meanwhile, Mikumo went to feed Tara using the dog food Koga had brought to the island. Tara, who had been sleeping in her carrier, began to growl as soon as Mikumo approached. He was so wary he didn't take a single bite of the food he was given.
Yuki decided to look for something for Fuwawa to eat.
The meat and fish they'd used last night were too rotten to eat. Besides, Yuki had heard once that canned mackerel was too salty for cats. Kikyo scowled at him and refused to share any more bonito.
In the end, there was nothing to use but dog food. Koga had brought more dog food and dog treats to the island then they could possibly use in three days. It wasn't the healthiest food for a cat, but it should have been better than the human food they'd brought.
Yuki picked Fuwawa up from where she'd been sleeping in his bag, and first tended to her injured leg. Then he tried feeding the bedraggled kitten some wet food.
Fortunately, she seemed to like it, and Fuwawa quickly downed the whole can. As a wild cat, Fuwawa was much tougher than Yuki had expected.
Afterwards, Fuwawa began sniffing the floor. Yuki had a feeling Mei had done the same thing when he was a kid, but he didn't know what it meant...
As Yuki tried to remember, Saijou, who had been watching from afar, began to laugh.
“Maybe she needs to use the bathroom.”
Yuki hurriedly picked Fuwawa up, unbolted the front door, and took her to the sandy area outside. Seeing the kitten immediately do her business, Yuki looked up at Saijou, who had followed him out.
“You sure know a lot about cats, don't you?”
“I used to have a dog and a cat at the same time. Though this one here doesn't seem to like me very much.”
After finishing up, Fuwawa immediately started glaring at Saijou. Perhaps because she was a wild animal, she seemed hesitant to let anyone other than Yuki into her heart. Smiling wryly, Yuki grabbed Fuwawa and put her back in his bag.
After returning to the multipurpose area and bolting the door behind them, Yuki suggested they all go to the cemetery.
“...I say that, but we can't leave Mr. Motegi alone here. Why don't we split into two groups?”
After a brief discussion, Yanagawa and Kikyo volunteered to stay behind in the former community center.
Yanagawa had probably volunteered because somebody had to stay behind, but... as far as Yuki knew, this felt very out of character for Kikyo.
As he began to wonder about that, the man himself spoke up.
“First off, me, Ryuuzen, and Saijou are all off the hook for being the Visitor. After all, we were in the Divine Land when Koga was killed, and we were together the whole time afterwards.”
Nobody objected to his reasoning. Kikyo then looked at Motegi, who was holding a cup of ramen in his hands.
“So the Visitor must be one of the four remaining people. Of the four, the scholar who was missing all day yesterday is the most suspicious, yeah?”
Motegi gave a small nod as he held his chopsticks.
“I can't blame you for thinking that way... Ms. Mikumo has already informed me of what took place yesterday.”
Kikyo grinned.
“If you're aware of it, then that makes explaining easier.”
He grabbed a transceiver off the floor of the multipurpose area and continued.
“I'm also curious about what's up with the cemetery, but I'm prepared to sacrifice myself for the greater good. I'll keep an eye on the scholar and Yanagawa. If either of them do anything suspicious, I'll call Ryuuzen on the transceiver. That work for the rest of you?”
Yuki pondered whether he should accept the proposal.
If Motegi was the Visitor, then even if he revealed his true nature, Yanagawa and Kikyo would be able to control him. But if Yanagawa was the Visitor, the wounded Motegi wouldn't be of much help. Would Kikyo be able to stand against her by himself?
Even as he pondered that, Kikyo was opening the lid of a toolbox in the corner of the room. He then began to examine its contents while humming a cheery little tune.
“...What are you doing?”
As Yuki asked, Kikyo took out a crowbar and began taking practice swings.
“What do you mean? Isn't it obvious? I'm grabbing a weapon.”
His eyes were shining, as if he looked forward to the Visitor revealing itself. He appeared to be enjoying this situation that gave him the opportunity to inflict harm on a humanoid being and call it self-defense.
...At any rate, it didn't look like they needed to worry about him.
In the end, they decided to leave Kikyo, Yanagawa, and Motegi behind and head for the cemetery. Before they left, Yuki decided to grab a hammer, a plastic cord, and a cutter from the toolbox.
After they left through the back door, Yanagawa bolted it behind them. They wouldn't have to worry about the Visitor attacking from the outside while they were gone.
The smell behind the former community center gradually grew worse the further up they went. Fuwawa didn't like the smell and ducked her head back into the bag.
Yuki coughed when they reached the top of the stairs, the floating ash filling his lungs.
The neat rows of gravestones had all been burned, along with the bamboo that had grown around them. Some of the gravestones had even been toppled over. The once shining white stones had all been covered in black soot, and the surrounding area had been burned black and coated in ash.
On one of the tiles of the path, there rested a butterfly with silver wings each sporting a single black spot. When they approached, it flitted away. Next to where the butterfly had been sat an oil lighter sporting an image of a character from an American comic book.
When Saijou saw it, he gave a small gasp.
“Isn't that Director Unno's?”
“Yes, I'm sure it is. I've seen him use it many times.”
It looked like the lighter had been used to start the fire. The Visitor must have taken it from the corpse's pocket.
Yuki noticed that Mikumo was standing in front of a gravestone, looking completely drained.
It was covered in soot, but they could make out the words “Here Lies Mikumo Eiko”. It was the same grave Yuki and the others had been looking at yesterday.
Yuki and Saijou looked at each other. Neither of them knew what to say. Only Shigaraki, who didn't know about what they'd seen yesterday, continued examining the burnt ruins.
“It's hard to tell because of the fire, but it looks like someone dug up the gravestones.”
As he said, there were marks on the ground that looked like dirt that had been dug up and refilled. However, due to the scorching and ash on the ground, they couldn't tell how much had been done.
Saijou also crouched to the ground and gave a nod.
“I guess this is where the Visitor dug up searching for the place listed in the code.”
“I suppose... but how could the Visitor have eavesdropped on our conversation about the code?”
As Yuki mumbled that last part to himself, Shigaraki blinked at him.
“Eh? You mean the Visitor didn't break the code?”
“No, if it had, it would have known the exact location of the material and wouldn't have needed to indiscriminately dig and burn everything.”
As Yuki struggled to find the answer, Saijou suddenly gasped.
“Wait, didn't we bring three transceivers to the island?”
One of them was with Yuki, the other was held by Saijou. And the third one was... Yuki cursed his carelessness. Yesterday, he'd been so preoccupied with keeping the Visitor trapped in the Divine Land that he'd completely lost track of it.
Mikumo's eyes also went wide.
“You don't mean the one that fell next to Director Unno's body?”
“It was careless of me not to retrieve it. I left it next to the bush where we found the body, so the Visitor must have recovered it.”
If that was the case, the Visitor had been privy to all of yesterday's radio conversation... including the answer to the code being hidden in the cemetery.
Yuki's theory that he'd spoken into the transceiver and the feeling of accomplishment he'd had at solving part of the mystery all felt suddenly hollow.
After a moment of silence, Mikumo returned her gaze to Eiko's gravestone and spoke softly.
“...So was the hiding place the code indicated my grandmother's grave after all?”
“No, it was somewhere else.”
His answer made Saijou burst out laughing.
“Seriously!? That's a surprise.”
Yuki didn't find it so funny.
“It looks like the place I think we're looking for is still untouched. But it could still be empty.”
“We won't know until we check. Now tell us how you solved the code already.”
At Mikumo's request, he picked up a branch from a nearby bush and wrote words in the dirt:
“The four ostracized golden beetles. In their hearts dwell the truth.”
“We can ignore the 'golden beetles', which are just an announcement that this is a code... Think about 'the four ostracized'.”
After a moment's thought, Saijou gave a slight nod.
“'Four' could indicate four wings. I'm pretty sure most insects have four wings, with the exception of mosquitoes and a few others, right?”
“You're right, but it's simpler than that. You can take it literally... This is a surprisingly simple code.”
Mikumo looked around, not really listening to his explanation. But then, she suddenly broke into a smile.
“Ah, I think I understand.”
She was pointing at the tiles of the path.
“You're right. There are four odd ones out here.”
The path was made up of tiles of 5 square cm each. Ash had piled up here and there, but not enough to obscure their color. Most of them were gray... it was likely an intentional design choice, but none of them were the same color. There was a rainbow of gray at their feet.
Shigaraki noticed something and crouched down, rubbing a tile with both hands. What he exposed was a reddish color.
“You're right. This tile here isn't gray, it's pink!”
About two meters away, Mikumo had found a plum-colored tile. Yuki brushed the ashes from a tile at his feet and exposed a third pink tile.
Saijou narrowed his eyes as he stared at the tiles they'd exposed one after another.
“So... should 'In their hearts dwell the truth' be interpreted as the answer lying in the center of the four tiles?”
“That's what I thought. The reddish-pink color is reminiscent of a heart, and 'heart' can also mean center.”
“Oh, I was actually right for once.”
While they were talking, Shigaraki found the last tile. The four tiles were made up of two salmon pink tiles and two plum tiles.
Yuki looked at them and thought for a while.
“It looks like the tiles make up the four points of a parallelogram.”
The tiles were spaced two meters apart on the shortest side and five meters apart on the longest side, so counting the tiles between them and calculating the center would be extremely difficult.
Mikumo already looked fed up, making Yuki struggle to hold back a laugh.
“We don't have to count the tiles. I brought some plastic cord, so let's do some measurements.”
The four tiles formed a parallelogram. Therefore, the area where its diagonals intersected should have been the center.
Shigaraki seemed dissatisfied as he drew diagonals in cord following Yuki's instructions.
“Isn't this code too simple? I expected it to be way more complicated and hard to solve. This is just lame.”
Yuki couldn't help but smile.
“I thought the same thing. But if you think about why the code exists, it's only natural to make it easy. After all... this code was made to be solved by a complete outsider to the island.”
Mikumo muttered something as she pulled the string.
“Or you could just be wrong.”
Just as Yuki was starting to lose confidence in his guess, the diagonals were complete. Saijou stood in the center and lay down a sharp stone as a marker.
“It's around here.”
“Okay, let's check it out.”
With that, Yuki began tapping at the tile in question with his hammer.
They found it quickly: one of the tiles made a different sound, covering a hollow cavity. Yuki, suddenly filled with nerves, smashed the tile with shaking hands.
A long, thin can was behind the tile.
It wasn't rusted, so it was probably made of stainless steel. He cautiously opened the lid, revealing a smaller can inside. Saijou blinked several times.
“What? Why the matryoshka doll routine?”
“It's just a double layer for extra preservation of the contents. Judging by the weight, I don't think there are any more cans inside.”
Just as Yuki had expected, all they found in the second can was a weathered plastic bag. Carefully removing it, Yuki withdrew a stack of papers.
However... no matter how well preserved it was, the soil of a subtropical environment was still a harsh environment. There were many places where the writing had been smudged or damaged by mold beyond the point of legibility.
Everyone looked on as Yuki spread out the tattered papers.
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