Pathway to Japanese Literature

“Hey, why don’t we go out for a bit?”

“Yeah...”

We seemed to have had too much to drink.
The steps staggered unsteadily without settling into any clear rhythm.
I rested my neck on Matsunaga’s shoulder—or rather clung tightly around his sturdy neck with both hands.
My fiery breath struck his crimson earlobe only to rebound and slap my own cheek.

A chill brushed against my nape.
When I regained awareness，we stood on the rooftop.
Complete darkness surrounded us—only our feet glimmered faintly below.
The ground appeared sprinkled with water.

“Here’s the bench.”
“Have a seat…”

He leaned my limp body against the back of the bench.
Ah, the cold wooden floor.
Feels good.
I let my head drop back with a heavy thud.
I could sense something missing.
I opened and closed my mouth like a fish.

“What’s this?” he said.
I heard his voice coming from an odd angle.

“Don’t you dare run away! …A cigarette!”

“Oh—you want a cigarette?”

He placed a freshly lit cigarette between my lips.
I inhale, then inhale again.
Delicious.
Truly delicious.

“Hey—you okay?”
Before I knew it, Matsunaga pressed his body right up against my side.

“I’m fine—oh.”
“This much…”

“It’s nearly eleven already… You really should head back early tonight—Mrs.—I suppose.”

“Cut it out!” I snapped back.
“Don’t mock me with this ‘Mrs.’ nonsense!”

“Even a cold-blooded Doctor would notice if his wife keeps returning late every night like this.”

“He’s already noticed, you know? What’s wrong with him noticing?”

“Of course it’s not good.”
“But I won’t claim to fear him.”

“Hmph, we’ll see about that.—Your voice reeks of fear.”

“Anyway, I don’t think provoking the Doctor is wise.”
“Making a scene would be pointless.”
“We should maintain peaceful appearances first—then enjoy ourselves beneath that pretense.”
“Perhaps you should go home early tonight and wind those white arms around the Doctor’s neck.”

In his words, one could indeed perceive my fear toward my husband.
The young Matsunaga was a child.
And he was an idolater.
My husband being a Doctor and having shut himself away in his laboratory doing nothing but research for over a decade now—this filled me with considerable pressure.
What was the big deal about him being a Doctor?
From my perspective, my husband was nothing but a paper doll of a fool.
If he weren’t such a fool, he couldn’t have spent his days—and nights—fiddling with corpses in that laboratory.
And yet, for these past three or four years, my husband hadn’t laid a finger on my body.

I had to bitterly recall a long-held worry here once more.

(If things kept up like this, this young man would surely try to leave me!)

He would surely leave me.
Ah, that would be disastrous!
Were that to happen, I would lose all strength to keep living.
Without Matsunaga, what meaning would a single day of my life hold?—Faced with this, there remained no path but to play my final trump card.
Oh, that final trump card!

"Hey—" I pulled at his body.
"Lend me your ear for a moment."

“?”

“Listen to what I’m about to tell you, and don’t you dare make a sound.”

He made a puzzled face and leaned his ear toward me.

“Perfect!—”
She dropped her voice harshly and whispered into his ear canal.
“For your sake, I’ll kill my husband tonight!”

“Huh?!”

Upon hearing this, Matsunaga stiffened his limbs rigidly in my arms.
What a spineless coward, and he’s already twenty-seven…

The mansion grounds were sinking into bottomless darkness.

(Perfect timing!) Tonight there wasn't a moon in the sky all night long.

Thud-thud—my footsteps echoed unpleasantly loud along the long corridor.
A dim corridor light glowed faintly on the cobweb-covered ceiling.
I turned right at the corner at a right angle.—A pungent chemical odor wafted through the air.
My husband’s laboratory was just ahead there.

I stood before my husband’s room and knocked rhythmically on the door.—There was no response.

It didn’t matter if there was no response.
When she turned the handle firmly, the door opened effortlessly.
My husband had not anticipated my visit at all.
So the doors had no locks whatsoever.
I slipped between the shelves lined with alcohol-preserved specimen jars and pressed resolutely deeper into the laboratory.

In the innermost dissection room, there came the clang of metal instruments coming into contact.
Ah, the dissection room!
It was the room I disliked most, but...

When she opened the door, there in the sunken dirt floor of the dissection room lay her husband’s figure—just as expected.

Her husband—hunched over a corpse on the dissection table, working on it—suddenly raised his face.
From between the white surgical cap and large mask, only his bulging eyes were visible.
The look in his eyes shifted from confusion to burning fury.
But tonight, I wasn’t the sort to be frightened by such things.

“There’s a strange groaning sound coming from the backyard.”
“And I can see some sort of flickering lights.”
“It’s so creepy I can’t sleep a wink.”
“Won’t you come take a look?”

“Ugh… ugh…” the husband growled animalistically.
“Tch. Don’t spout nonsense.”
“There’s no such thing!”

“But it’s real, I tell you.
“That must certainly be coming from that empty well.
“You’re the one at fault here.
“Using a well of such pedigree in that manner…”

The empty well was located in the inner garden.
Even its ancient pedigree was reduced by the unreasonable husband’s hands to nothing more than an underground trash bin for throwing in leftover bones after dissections.
The bottom was so deep that no matter how much scrap was thrown in，it never rose to the surface.

“Shut up!
“…I’ll look into it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow won’t do.
“Would you be so kind as to investigate it right now?
“Otherwise, I shall go to the police and request they dispatch someone to inspect that well.”

“Wait,” trembled the husband’s voice.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t look.… Now, lead the way.”

The husband irritably threw the scalpel onto the dissection table.
After carefully covering the corpse with a waterproof cloth as if it were something precious, he finally stepped away from the table.

The husband took a thick flashlight from the shelf and went out briskly.
I kept about ten steps away and followed behind.
The area around the shoulders of his surgical gown was ugly and angular, his retreating figure unnervingly cold in a way that defied description.
With each step came a lurching gait that snagged on nothingness—no different from an artificial human's mechanical stride.

I was even driven by the impulse to shove his ugly body from behind.
The uncanny sensation I felt in that moment would often resurface in my chest afterward, each time leaving me sickened.
But as for why that made me feel sick, I did not yet clearly know at that time.
Later, when that mystery was solved in an instant, I was plunged into unspeakable shock and despair.
I won't explain it here, as the reason will become clear in due time.

When they descended into the silent backyard,the husband flicked on his flashlight.The light cast a white glow upon the garden stones and overgrown grass,aS though viewing a photographic negative of a landscape held up to tHe light.We advanced iN silence,pushing through tHe overgrown weeds.
"There'S nothing here,"tHe Husband muttered lowly.
"There most certainly iS something there."
"It'S by that well."
"What iSn't there iSn't there!"
"It'S an illusion born from your cowardice!"
"Where'S thiS light supposed tO Be?"
"Where'S thiS groaning supposed tO Be?..."

“Gah! You’re acting strangely.”

“What?”

“Do take a look.”
“The well lid…”

“The well lid?”
“Oh! The well lid is open.”
“Wh-what’s happened here?”

The well lid was a heavy iron one.
It had a diameter of over one meter and was extremely heavy.
And on top of it was an elliptical hole.
Fifteen centimeters by twenty centimeters, so it was nearly circular.

The husband crept toward the secret well.
He meant to peer inside undetected.
His waist lifted more than halfway.
The husband's attention poured entirely into the hole.
He didn't notice me standing right behind him.
Opportunity!

"Hah!"

I slammed into his waist.
Caught off guard,

"Wh-what are you doing, Gyokuko!"

With that, he finally recognized my murderous intent.
But before his scream could finish echoing, his form vanished from the earth.
He plunged into the deep empty well.
Only the flashlight slipped from his grip, somersaulted wildly, and smashed its end against the grassy tangle.

"Got him!" I felt my mind suddenly sharpen.
But could I feel secure?

“Finally, we’ve done it!”

Another voice approached from behind.
Though she knew it was Matsunaga’s voice, she jolted.

“Give me a hand here.”

I illuminated with the retrieved flashlight a large stone at my feet that was about twice the size of a pickling stone.

“What are you going to do?”

“Roll it over here…” With a heavy rumble, she shifted the stone. “Ah, that’s enough now.” —The rest she did alone.

“Hnngh... heave!”

“Mrs., stop that!” he frantically tried to stop her, but—

“Hnngh... heave!”

The large stone rumbled into motion.
And with tremendous force, plunged into the well.
A final gift for her husband.—After a brief pause, an indescribable scream echoed from the earth’s depths.

Matsunaga shuddered violently beside me.

“Now—use the winch again and close the lid for me, will you?”

With a grating creak, the winch chain groaned, and upon the well was placed once more the heavy iron lid.

“Can’t you take a peek down through that hole?”

On the iron lid was an elliptical peephole.
It measured approximately twenty centimeters vertically and fifteen centimeters horizontally.

“Don’t be ridiculous…”

Matsunaga recoiled in shock.

If only the darkness of night could have lasted forever like this.
If only this world of just him and me upon the soft bedding had been left forgotten by the eyes of the world forever.
However, indiscriminately, the white dawn came through the curtains.

“Well, I’ll be going out for a bit, okay?”

Matsunaga was an honest bank clerk.
If she considered eternal happiness, there was nothing to do but obediently send him off to work.

“Off you go then. And come back early this evening, now.”

He left while self-conscious about his puffy eyes.

This large mansion without servants was utterly silent, like a haunted house.
It had been customary for a maid to come once weekly to restock provisions and collect laundry.
No matter how long she stayed in bed now, she had become someone who could live entirely as she pleased.
The husband who would summon her only to bark impatient orders was gone too.
So it would have been better had she remained in bed forever, yet somehow she couldn’t settle down to sleep.

With conflicting emotions, I finally got out of bed.
I changed into a kimono and faced the mirror.
A pale face, bloodshot eyes, parched lips—

(You killed your husband!)

I hurled unspoken words at the face in the mirror.
Oh, murderer!
I had done something irreversible.
Inside the well visible beyond the window, my husband’s body would decay.
He had lost all strength to ever rise from this earth again.
Like a pencil lead snapping, his life had been severed cleanly.
His research, his family—though I alone had been that family—and his wealth had all slipped from my husband’s hands.
He might as well have wasted every effort until now.
Whose fault was it that things had come to this?
I was the one who killed.
But hadn’t my husband himself led me to kill him?
Had I married another man, I surely wouldn’t have needed murder.
My misfortune had driven me to it.
And yet these hands had committed murder.
This woman reflected in the mirror.
No scrubbing could cleanse it away.

The words "husband killer" must be branded into my flesh like a massive bruise.
Who could possibly fail to notice it?
I could feel the hand of the law creeping closer and closer to my skin.

(Ah, if I’d known it would make me feel this awful, I never should have killed my husband!)

I could no longer endure the encroaching anxiety.
Was there nothing that could reach out a helping hand?

"That's right—there is! There is!
Money.
The money my husband left behind.
I'll find it!"

I once walked in on my husband counting an enormous stack of banknotes.
That was about five years ago, but even if he had used it for his research, there should still be a considerable amount left.
Once I found it, then starting tonight I could do whatever I wanted.

I spent the time from then until evening searching for my late husband's hidden assets.
Starting from the tearoom, then the bedroom, the study's bookshelves, the desk drawers, and even inside the wardrobe—I scoured every inch.
The result was, needless to say, a complete failure.
The money I thought would be so plentiful didn’t even amount to fifty yen.
The only thing left was to enter my husband’s dissection room and search even the corpses’ abdominal cavities—but that particular room alone was something I couldn’t muster the courage to touch.
But even without going that far, I realized searching any further would be futile.
It turned out I had discovered several savings passbooks, but their current balances—as if by prior agreement—were all trivial amounts of less than one yen.
In the end, I discovered my husband’s financial circumstances were dire.
Though unexpected, there was no help for it—it was a fact.

Overwhelmed by disappointment, I found myself dazed this time. There remained no path but to part with the haunted house and vast land. When Matsunaga came, I thought I would consult him about it at an appropriate time. He would undoubtedly come to visit soon. I faced the mirror again and adjusted my hair.

But when times are bad, bad things continue without end. The reason being, Matsunaga never came to visit, no matter how long I waited. As I waited—thirty minutes, then an hour—before I knew it, the clock finally struck twelve. And the date turned over by one.

(I knew it! — Matsunaga has fled from me forever!)
The deed I boldly undertook for his sake must have planted terror in that childish young man's chest.
He had fled from the murderous wife who forced her way in.
I might never see that lovely man again...

The night filled with torment finally tore apart.
The clarity of the weather felt hateful.
But my feelings, trapped inside me, kept growing more infuriating.
Fit after fit seized me—howling like a beast, I hurled my body against the grime-streaked gray wall.
This crushing loneliness, this indelible guilt, this terror creeping closer with every tremor—such agony made me fear I’d lose my mind. It was terrifying.
Had that massive iron lid budged even slightly, I might have leapt into the well to chase after the husband I’d murdered.

Screaming, writhing, thrashing about—until finally my body gave out, and I threw myself onto the bed.
I did sleep, but saw countless terrifying dreams one after another—then suddenly jerked awake from those daydreams.
When I realized—Oh dear, I must have dozed off—the glass window facing the garden was being tapped with a steady knocking sound, so I turned my face toward it.

“Ah—!” I let out an involuntary cry and sprang up from where I sat.
For beyond the garden-facing window, there was someone peering intently inside.
That round face—undoubtedly, it was Matsunaga’s smiling visage, the very one I’d thought had fled forever.

“Mr. Ma, please come in—”

“Why didn’t you come last night?”

Though I felt joy, I was also quite vexed, so I first asked about that matter.

“I made you worry last night, huh?”
“But I really couldn’t come—something major came up, you know.”

“What do you mean ‘something major’? Having dinner with some young woman?”

“It’s n-not some carefree thing like that!”
“I was detained at the Metropolitan Police Headquarters last night.”
“And I was only released about thirty minutes ago.”

“Oh! The Metropolitan Police Headquarters!”

I gasped in realization.
Had our crime been exposed so quickly?

"That's right—it's a disastrous affair," he said with sudden excitement flushing his features.
"Last night, someone stole a large sum of cash from our bank's vault and escaped."
"We can't identify them."
"The guard stationed there—Aoyama Kinnoshin—was murdered."
"—And what's strange is that every possible entrance to that room remains completely sealed."
"The only openings are the blower intake in that chamber and an air vent in the wall's transom."
"The vent has an iron rod wedged in so tightly it can't be removed—perfectly secure."
"The other blower opening does have a removable cover, but it's only about twenty centimeters across—connected to an iron pipe of similar size."
"With that diameter, no amount of desperate struggling could let a human body squeeze through."
"And yet clear evidence shows the culprit entered."
"How could such an absurd situation exist?"

“Was a lot of cash stolen?”

“Yeah, about thirty thousand yen—since it was such an absurd situation, the news was banned, and all us bank clerks came under suspicion.”
“Not only was I confined because of that, but I even ended up having to stay overnight.”
“I had a terrible time.”

Matsunaga took out a cigarette from his pocket and smoked it with relish.

“What a strange case, huh.”

“It’s utterly bizarre.”
“Even if you’re not a detective, that crime scene makes you think.”
“In a room without an entrance—in broad daylight—a huge sum was stolen and someone got killed.”

“How exactly was that guard killed?”

“There’s a long thin scalpel mark running from chest to abdomen—burned in a weird way.”
“Looks like an old wound at first glance, but it’s not.”

“Oh my—what could have happened, I wonder.”

“But from the autopsy results, they found something even more serious.”
“The truly shocking thing wasn’t so much that strange old wound as what lay beneath it.”
“Because when they split open his abdomen—isn’t it horrifying?—that guard had no lungs, no heart, no stomach, no intestines.”
“Every last organ had completely vanished.”
“Could such an unbelievable thing ever happen again?”

"Oh my—" I said, though an odd sensation came over me.
I had recalled what should have naturally come to mind in that moment—and shuddered.

"But that strange disappearance of organs ended up saving us detained employees—the fact that we hadn't done it was conversely proven by that very bizarre crime itself."

“So you mean…”

“In other words, they concluded someone must have sneaked into the vault—which had no entrance fit for a human—stolen thirty thousand yen, then even stolen away the guard’s internal organs.”
“Though of course, they don’t know which came first…”

“That’s quite a drastic conclusion.”
“Could such a thing even be possible?”

“Some so-called famous detective came up with that conclusion.”
“The investigation squad members adopted it.”
“Though mind you, even with that conclusion reached, I don’t think the case will be solved quickly.”
“Ah, but there are people who commit such horrifying acts.”

“Let’s stop this talk already…… If you’d just come back to me, there’d be nothing more to say.”
“……To change our luck, I’ll bring some old wine now.”

We then kept drinking cup after cup of smooth Western wine.
The wine’s power dispelled every dark emotion.
I felt truly grateful.
—And though it was still early in the evening, we decided to draw the curtains and go to bed.

That night, we slept soundly.
The relief of Matsunaga’s return and the fatigue from consecutive days gently melted together under the wine’s influence, plunging me into a mud-like slumber.……

—The next morning, when she came to her senses, daylight had already fully broken through.
"I slept so soundly.
I had completely regained my strength."

"Oh—"

The figure of Matsunaga, who I thought had been lying asleep beside me, was nowhere to be seen—not on the bed, nor anywhere else in the room.

Thinking he might be taking a walk in the garden, I waited for a while, but there was no sound of his footsteps at all.

“Has he already left…?” Even though he’d said he was taking the day off today… With that thought running through my mind, I looked at the tabletop and discovered an unfamiliar square envelope lying there.
I felt as though something had struck me in the chest.

However, until I reached out and opened that left-behind letter, I hadn’t realized that such an immense shock lay concealed within.
Ah, that left-behind letter!
It was unmistakably Matsunaga’s handwriting, but the hastily scrawled pen strokes trembled like a seismograph needle, making it barely possible to decipher the following message.

“Beloved Gyokuko—”

“I have been abandoned by God.”
“A great, irreplaceable happiness—I had to cast it all away.”

“Gyokuko, I can no longer appear before you again.”
“Ah, the reason for that…?”

“Gyokuko, you must be careful.”
“The bizarre criminal who attacked that bank vault is a truly terrifying fiend.”
“I consider that perhaps his true target was none other than myself.”
“I... I must now record the truth in writing and convey it to you, my beloved.”
“—I have lost—in the span of a single night—that imposing nose and tautly defined lips of mine (do not laugh at me for praising my own features—this truly marks the final time I shall do so)—I have lost that nose and those lips.”
“In the dead of night, my eyes suddenly opened—a strange unease came over me—and when I got up, I discovered in your vanity mirror the visage of the most hideous man imaginable!”
“I beg you not to make me write any more.”

And finally, I pray one last thing:
"May no harm like that which I suffered be visited upon your body."

“Matsunaga Tetsuo”

Having finished reading this letter, I was plunged into grief. What a heinous villain. To steal the bank’s money, murder the guard, then gruesomely destroy Matsunaga’s beautiful face before fleeing—!

Who on earth could this villain be—what fiend would do such a thing? The letter stated that the criminal was someone targeting Matsunaga. What could Matsunaga have possibly done?

Ah, could it really be that after all? That might be the case. ……No, no—that can’t be. My husband is already dead. There’s no way he could have done such a thing.

At that moment, I suddenly discovered a bizarre object on the floor.
I slid down from the bed, approached its side, and peered intently.
It was a clump of tea-brown ash.
The clump of ash—that was indeed something familiar.
It was unmistakably the cigarette butt from the German-made half-rolled tobacco that the husband had always favored.

The fact that such a cigarette butt remained in this room I had cleaned both yesterday and the day before struck me as strange.
There was no other conclusion but to think that someone had entered here during the night, smoked a cigarette, and left the butt on the floor.
And it was abundantly clear that Matsunaga did not smoke that variety of cigarette.

“Then… could it be that the husband who was supposed to be dead…”

I suddenly felt darkness engulf my vision.
Ah, could such horror truly exist?
Even after we'd pushed him into the well and dropped that massive stone block onto his head...

At that moment, the brass handle on the entrance door began spinning wildly on its own.
There was a metallic click of a lock.

(Who could it be?) I could no longer remain standing.—The door opened quietly.
Gradually it opened wider, and from beyond it, a figure appeared.
It was unmistakably the figure of the husband.
That was indeed the figure of the husband—the husband she had surely killed with these very hands.
Was it a ghost, or the real man?

A scream leapt from my throat.
The figure of my husband advanced silently toward me without uttering a word.
Upon closer inspection—his right hand gripping that cherished, weathered pipe of his, his left dangling a large bag stuffed with surgical instruments...
I was overcome by absolute terror.
Ah... What in God's name did he mean to do?

My husband thudded the bag onto the table.
When he opened the lock with a metallic ping, the bag collapsed, and gleaming surgical instruments appeared.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“……”

The husband picked up a large, gleaming scalpel.
And inch by inch, he began creeping closer toward my body.
The tip of the scalpel reached toward the tip of my nose.

“Aaaah!”
“Someone, pleeease come help me!”

“Hih-hih-hih.”

And then, for the first time, the husband spoke.
It was a laugh that spoke of unbearable pleasure.

“Hyah!—”

A white object came flying from the husband's hand and blocked my nostrils.
——A pungent odor.
Then, just like that, I lost consciousness.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on what felt like a straw mat in a pitch-dark place—different from the living room with the bed.
My back hurt.
I appeared to have been stripped naked.
When I tried to sit up and began moving my body, I was startled by its strange condition.

“Ah! My arms won’t move!”

When I wondered what was wrong and looked closely, it made perfect sense why they wouldn't move—both my arms had been cleanly severed below the shoulders.
An armless woman!

“Fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh.”
From the corner came the sound of an unpleasant sneering laugh.

“How’s your body feeling?”

Ah! That was my husband’s voice.
Ah, now I understood.
After I had lost consciousness earlier, both my arms had been severed by my husband’s hands.
No hatred could ever match his vengeful heart!

“Awake now? Let me help you stand,” said the husband as he slid his icy hands beneath my armpits.
I felt myself being lifted, but everything below my waist felt unnervingly weightless.
I managed to rise unsteadily—only reaching torso height.
My legs had been severed from the thighs down!

“Wh-what kind of devil does such a horrible thing?!”
“You’ve cut everything… everywhere…”

“Even if I cut them off, I’ve made sure you won’t feel any pain.”

“Even if there’s no pain, you’ve gone and cut off my arms and legs, haven’t you? You monster! Devil! You beast!”

“Some parts I’ve cut off, but others I’ve added, you know.” “Hih-hih-hih.”

“Added parts?”

At my husband's uncanny words, I shudder again.
What does he mean to do with me?

“I’ll show you now.”
“Look! Take a good look at your face in this mirror!”

A flashlight suddenly blazes into my face from directly in front.
And within the mirror presented before me.
—I see within it what should never be seen.

“No! No! No! Please stop!”
“Take that mirror away…”

“Fuh-fuh-fuh.
“Seems you’ve taken a liking to it, haven’t you?
“The extra nose growing in your face’s center—that’s from that man.
“And these double lips like armored shutters—those are his too.
“All things you loved.
“You should be thanking me, hih-hih-hih.”

“Why won’t you kill me?
“I’d rather be dead.
“……Just kill me!”

“Wait, wait.”
“I can’t just kill you in such a wasteful way.”
“Now lie down properly on your side.”
“I’ll force you to drink liquid food now.”
“From now on, three times daily I’ll take your hand and make you eat.”

“Who do you think would drink that?!”

“If you refuse to drink, I’ll give you a nutrient enema.”
“Or perhaps an injection instead.”

“Just kill me now!”

“Now now.”
“I must properly educate you from this point onward.”
“Since you’re lying down, I’ll show you something special.”
A single hole gaped open there.
“Go on—look down through it.”

Peephole—the moment I heard those words, I hurriedly searched my mind for it.
Ah, there it was, there it was.
It was a hole about the size of a wristwatch.
Wriggling my body like a caterpillar, I pressed my eye to the hole.
Below, I could see a desk and other items.
It was my husband’s laboratory.

“Can you see anything?”

When he said this, I peered through the small hole from various angles.

There it was, there it was.
The thing my husband had told me to look at.
The figure of a man with a monstrous face bound to one of the chairs!
The figure of a person recognizable at first glance by what they wore——ah, how horrifically transformed young Matsunaga was!
A rebellious fury surged through me.

"I won't let you execute your scheme."
"I refuse to peer through this hole anymore."
"If I don't look down, you'll lose over half your plan's power."

“Hah hah hah! You foolish woman,” laughed the husband in the darkness. “What I’m planning isn’t anything so trivial. Whether you look or not, soon enough you’ll feel it clearly!”

“Then what are you trying to make me feel?”

“That is a wife’s path! A wife’s fate! Think it through properly!”

With that, my husband left this attic space, his footsteps clunking heavily through its confines.

And so began the strange life in the attic.
I lay sprawled out in the same spot like a sack of flour, with nothing to do but wait for whatever my husband would do next.
Three times a day, as promised, my husband brought the meals and put them into my mouth.
I came to think of my lack of hands as a blessing.
Because I had no hands, I was spared from touching my own grotesque face with its two noses and four lips.

Though I thought attending to bodily needs would be impossible, my medically skilled husband had devised an extremely efficient solution.
In exchange, one day when I felt a hypodermic needle being thrust through my throat, I lost my ability to speak loudly thereafter.
A voice so hoarse and cracked it bore no resemblance to before now emerged from deep in my throat as nothing more than a token effort.
No matter what was done, the captive had no means to resist.

As for Matsunaga, whose nose and lips had been destroyed—what became of him after that? By the time I noticed, he was no longer visible through that attic hole. What remained visible was my husband’s working manner—buried among the same revolting corpses, dismembered limbs, and jar-preserved organs as ever—diligently wielding his scalpel for some purpose or other. Every day from morning till night, I spent my time in the attic observing his working manner.

"What an earnest researcher!"

The thought came suddenly—and I later scrambled to retract it.
I'd realized I was starting to fall into my husband's scheme.
"The way of a wife! The fate of a wife!" he'd proclaimed—but what truth did he mean to force upon me?

However, the day finally arrived when that became clearly apparent to me.

Then came a day after ten full days had passed—that hour just before dawn when the faint light of daybreak was about to stream through the window.
A team of investigators accompanied by police officers swept into the room directly below like the wind.
I noticed detectives vigorously searching the house.
A short distance from the dissection room stood a structure resembling a slightly elevated mahjong table, upon which sat a jar that looked ideal for pickling cold rice cakes.

“There's something here!”

“What’s this? …Oh, it won’t open!”

The search team members found the jar and formed a tight circle around it.
They lowered it to the floor and tried to open it, but contrary to its appearance, the lid was tightly sealed and wouldn’t open easily.

“Leave that jar for later,” said what appeared to be the chief.
The detectives scattered in all directions upon hearing those words.
The jar lay discarded on the floor.

“We just can’t find him.
“The culprit must’ve escaped, I tell ya!”

They indeed seemed to be searching for us, the couple.
I desperately wanted to let them know I was here, but the captive bound by heavy chains couldn’t make so much as a mouse’s whisper from the attic.

The group swiftly exited the room，and after that，all fell silent and still—the chance slipped away．
Even so，where had my husband gone？

"Oh? What's that?"
At that moment, I sensed something squirming in the room below.

Suddenly, something began clattering and shaking.

Ah! It was the jar!

The jar that had been lowered from the table to floor shook restlessly as though containing living things.
Was something inside?
If there were indeed contents - perhaps a cat? A small dog? Or even a coconut crab?
At last convinced this house had truly become a den of monsters,I amused myself watching that clattering vessel sway all day long.
After all,I hadn't encountered such novel entertainment lately.
That day waned and another dawned.
Though diminished somewhat,the jar still swayed intermittently with those same comical clattering motions from yesterday.

Though it seemed my husband should have returned by now, somehow he still hadn't appeared.
I was starving beyond endurance.
I had stopped caring about my own body.
All my restlessness had gathered around a single bowl of soup.

The fourth day, the fifth day.
I no longer had the strength to lift my head.
The jar no longer moved at all.
And so, the seventh day finally arrived.
I couldn’t tell the time, but upon suddenly noticing a clattering sound from the room below and looking down through the usual peephole, a squad of police officers had gathered just as they had come before.
Among them, a brisk man in a suit whom I hadn’t seen before was saying something in front of everyone.

“...Dr. Muroto has absolutely not left this room. I now think I should have come here with you all earlier. I fear it’s already too late. It was indeed Dr. Muroto who infiltrated the heavily secured vault room of that XX Bank. You may find this strange, but in fact, Dr. Muroto entered that room through a ventilation pipe measuring a mere fifteen centimeters in diameter.”

“That doesn’t fit with logic, Homura!” shouted what seemed to be the chief from beside them.
“The very notion of Dr.Muroto’s hulking frame squeezing through that slender pipe surpasses absurdity—it defies articulation!”

“Then to have you retract that absurdity, I shall now present Dr. Muroto’s body before everyone’s eyes.”

“What? You know where the Doctor is?”
“Where the hell is he?”

“He’s inside here.”

Homura bent down and pointed at the jar at his feet.
The police officers burst out laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all.

Homura didn’t show any anger. He placed his hands on the jar, turning it over and fiddling with the lid. Then, after bowing respectfully to the jar, he struck its midsection with the large hammer he held, splitting it open with a dull crack. From inside rolled out something resembling a yellow pillow with a heavy thud.

“This is the starvation-ravaged corpse of Dr. Muroto, our nation’s foremost authority in surgery!”

Overwhelmed by the sight, the people instinctively averted their gaze.
What a human body.
The face appeared shaved down from one side, with a slight protrusion of bone at the shoulders, only the left half of the chest remaining, and the abdomen severed just above the navel.
Neither arms nor legs were visible at all.
Even among broken dolls, there was nothing with such a wretched form.

“Everyone.
This is what Dr.Muroto’s thesis describes as the human body’s minimum streamlined form.
Through extreme physical reorganization - reducing two lungs to one, excising the stomach entirely, and directly connecting to the intestines - he achieved this state.
By these means, the brain supposedly gains twenty times an ordinary person’s capacity. Dr.Muroto tested this research upon his own body.”

The crowd listened in stunned silence to Homura’s explanation.

“This jar served as Dr.Muroto’s bed.
The ideal resting place for such a streamlined form.
Now then - how could someone in this condition walk freely through the streets?
I shall now demonstrate those limbs.”

Homura stood up and went to the table where the jar had been placed. He kept searching the center of the table until finally pressing down firmly with his finger from above. As soon as there was a creaking sound, two arms and two legs jutted out abruptly from inside the table. It formed Dr. Muroto's arms and legs in midair.

“Look here. If we posit that when the jar’s lid opened and Dr.Muroto’s body sprang up to this height via a spring mechanism, these artificial limbs would snap perfectly into place through electromagnet activation. However, this operation required Dr.Muroto to press the hidden button on the table through the hole at the jar’s base. Without pressing it, this jar’s lid wouldn’t open either. Dr.Muroto’s starvation resulted from this jar being lowered from the table while he slept.”

The assembly recoiled in collective anguish.

“However, Dr.Muroto’s mind had been plunged into madness by some cause.”
“And thus he perpetrated that heinous act.”
“By temporarily detaching his limbs into separate pieces, passing through to the other side, and then reassembling them as they were, he could pass through a narrow pipe with ease.”
“Without that consideration, one cannot believe he infiltrated the vault room.”
“Now you should see my theory isn’t absurd.”

Eventually, Homura urged everyone to leave.

“What about Mrs. Muroto?”

Then the Chief remembered me.

“According to the Doctor’s diary, Mrs. Gyokuko has been strangled to death in the mountains of the Alps.”
“Now then—we must make haste to the Alps.”

The people filed out of the room in a steady stream.

“Wait!”

I screamed with all my might.
Yet that voice never reached their ears.
Ah, fool! Fool!
Detective Homura, you fool!
Can’t you see I’m chained here?
My husband escaped through the hole in that well’s lid.
The accursed stone block never struck him.
Ah, now only starvation awaits me.
By the time that fool returns, I’ll no longer be of this world.
When the husband dies, the wife too shall naturally perish!
Now at death’s door, my husband’s ravings finally make sense.
Perhaps he had foreseen this outcome long ago.
Here I shall gracefully celebrate death!