Pathway to Japanese Literature

It had already been half an hour since hearing Senso-ji Temple's midnight bell; the spring night lay deep, sleeping sweetly and painfully.
The sole square that partitioned the thick darkness with a gaping presence was the substation window carved through a heavy brick wall; inside, oil-filled transformers resembling a congregation of gas tanks emitted a monotonous "Uuuunnn" hum.
In a corner where snow-white marble switchboards lined up coldly in a row, buoyed by red and blue pilot lamp lights, sat isolated a single desk upon which lay a large power transmission log sheet inscribed with slender numerals and a pencil carelessly tossed aside—yet the on-duty technician was nowhere to be seen.

Now, within this vast substation resembling an empty sake warehouse devoid of any human presence, only the machines lived on like the heart of a demon.

Zzzt!

Clang-clang-clang-clang!

The starkly bleached silence of the night shattered as a shrill metallic clamor erupted.
A garish bluish-green arc flash leapt up to the ceiling. —The circuit breaker had activated and cut off.

Then, from an unexpected window shadow, a man swiftly sprang out and rushed to the switchboard.
With precise, well-practiced movements, he turned the resistor handle in rapid circles and, with a loud clatter, re-engaged the circuit breaker.
The pilot lamp shifted from blue to red as the bell abruptly fell silent.
Remaining thus, the technician stood rigid before the switchboard, his sturdy frame held erect as though tracking some unseen presence.
He appeared to be a man thoroughly seasoned through four decades of technical work.
—One minute, two minutes.
The spring night lay deep, sleeping sweetly and painfully.

“Mr. Toki!
“Mr. Toki, just...”

Suddenly, the narrow door leading to the back entrance opened slightly, and from the gap, the face of a young man popped into view.
His face was terribly pale; clearly flustered by something, he kept glancing around warily.

"Yeah."
The technician whirled around,

“Kun-chan? What is it?” he asked casually, stepping away from the switchboard.

“Could you come here for a moment? Something’s really wrong. O-Yu’s collapsed and—”

The youth showed a desperately pleading, confused expression while swallowing his parched words.

“O-Yu—”

“Yes, she collapsed and just won’t wake up no matter what. I’m at my wit’s end here.”

Toki Kensuke furrowed his thick brows and glanced briefly toward the window.

"This is troublesome—I can't wake my partner—"

"Huh?"

"It's Kita-kō. He complicates things."
"He's a tricky one, you see."

The youth's eyes instantly filled with terror.

"Well, let's leave things as they are and go take a quick look."
"Where is it?"

The technician, as if recalling something, casually pushed the youth's shoulder and exited through the back door.
Proceeding stealthily along a narrow alleyway where sparse eaves lights dotted the enveloping darkness, they walked about twenty paces in silence when—

"Mr. Toki, here!" the youth said, stopping and pointing at the path.

When they pressed their faces to the ground to look, O-Yu's round face—upturned like a ginkgo leaf—immediately caught their eye.
From her neck down to where her chest lay exposed, the "white snake" skin she always prided herself on stood out distinctly even to night-adjusted eyes.
Because her body was arched back, her chignon had been crushed beneath her head, and the red hair cord protruded from behind her earlobes.

"O-Yu! O-Yu!"

The young man called out in a hushed, fearful voice while shaking the woman vigorously, but she remained limp and motionless. He had done this several times before, but once more he mechanically pulled open the black satin collar and thrust his hand against her chest as if clinging to a miracle. Immediately his hand met the plump, resilient curve of her breast, but that chest no longer held the searing heat that had tormented him so—now he could only detect the faintest residual warmth fading away. What about her heart? ("See? Like this,") she would say while taking his hand to demonstrate that vigorous pulsation—but now even that laughing heart had stopped dead.

“Ah—the heart has stopped—”

“What—the heart?!”

Toki Kensuke, who had been blankly gazing at O-Yu's pale face in a half-crouch, finally let out a stunned cry. He tentatively grasped her stiffened arm, but of course the pulse was gone.

"Kun-chan, open up her chest."

After waiting for the youth to bare the collar with all his strength, Toki pressed his ear firmly against the spot below O-Yu's breast, his face slightly flushed. There was no heartbeat whatsoever. He immediately pried open her eyelids to check, but the pupils were already fully dilated and lifeless.

“She’s dead. She’s completely stopped breathing.”

“This is terrible—but why did she die?”

“Why? You’re asking why? What had you been doing all this time?”

When confronted like this, even the youth flushed red before the older technician.
But given the circumstances, this weak-willed youth had no choice but to depend on Toki’s help now, and so he abruptly launched into his explanation without preamble.

Shortly after the evening lights were lit, O-Yu had climbed up to the second floor—where Yamana Kunitaro rented a room—via the back staircase as usual.

“Tonight, I told them I was going to Negishi no Sato and came here after lying through my teeth, you know.”
“Even I want to stay over properly sometimes—it’s fine.”
“Even the Boss suspecting his wife so much—how embarrassing for an old man’s reputation.”
“Who cares? If it’s found out, we’ll deal with it then.”

Putting on her femme fatale airs, O-Yu clung tightly to Kunitaro, looking utterly delighted.
Having tormented this timid youth to her satisfaction and refusing to leave his side even slightly, she had suddenly changed her mind mere moments before.

“I should go back after all.
You won’t get mad, will you?
When I come next time, it’s better if I don’t stay over.”

“But it’s already past midnight.”

“I ain’t scared.
Look at me—I’m White Snake O-Yu.
Night roads don’t faze me.”

“Then I’ll walk you there.”

“Of course!”

O-Yu, still clinging to Kunitaro, exited through the back staircase to the front. But when they turned past a wall and came to this spot,

“Oh dear, I left my purse behind.
“See? When I untied my obi earlier, I placed it on the bookshelf for a moment.”
“It’s your fault, so hurry up and get it!”

O-Yu poked Kunitaro’s chest with her shoulder, her face brimming with the seductive smile she only showed when they were alone. That voluptuous expression was still clearly lingering in Kunitaro’s eyes—

By the time he hurried back with the purse, O-Yu was already lying collapsed here.

“At first I thought it was a joke,”
“But there was something strange about her condition, you see?”
“So I panicked—”

“Between when you left here and came back—how long was Miss O-Yu alone?”

“It couldn’t have been more than three minutes.”

“Three minutes?”
“And when you returned—you saw no one in this alleyway?”

“Yes... I don’t remember clearly, but I’m sure I didn’t see anyone.”

But at that moment, the youth suddenly recalled how the substation’s square windows had been blazing brilliantly for some reason.

“This is troublesome, either way.
What will you do?”

At Toki’s words, Kunitaro suddenly recalled his own precarious position and immediately clutched his head as if shrinking back.

“I—I’ll be killed.
I’ll be tortured to death for sure!”

There was nothing he could say to that.

To begin with, O-Yu was both mistress and wife to Katō Kichizō, who ran a fairly large butcher shop in Imado-chō. But the problem was that this Kichizō happened to be a gambling boss—having started out calling himself "Skinny Horse Kichi" in his early days, he had now become widely recognized as the "Oyabun of Imado". Moreover, O-Yu was Boss Kichizō's cherished wife.

About five years ago, when O-Yu was still twenty years old and working at a factory—as was common in any factory—in the evening, large amounts of warm water discharged from the boilers would be channeled into a bathtub in a corner of the yard, where the workers washed away the day's sweat.
From that boiler-heated bath emerged O-Yu's skin—with its fine texture, perpetually glistening moistness, and beautiful lustrous complexion—which became the talk of the entire factory.

“Miss O-Yu’s body is just like a white snake.”

It was this white snake-like skin that Kichizō, who had come to the factory on some business, saw at a glance. With the ferocity of a forty-year-old man's passion, he splendidly drove off the many young men clinging to O-Yu, and before long had made her into something that was neither quite mistress nor wife.

Thus O-Yu transformed from a mere girl into a gang madam in the blink of an eye, boldly styling herself "White Snake O-Yu" while learning the ways of underworld conduct. Despite her youth, she proved adept at tending to the Boss, and rumors abounded of persistent suitors meeting painful ends.

But where demons lurk remains unknowable.
That O-Yu—so iron-willed—had since New Year's become wholly enthralled by timid university student Yamana Kunitaro—
Their sweet secret had stayed mercifully hidden from the Boss until now, letting them hoard stolen joys—yet here too some fiend had been chuckling all along.
Should their affair with Kunitaro come to light through O-Yu's death, what cruel retribution might spring from a middle-aged lover's rancor?

Faced with this pitiful young man who seemed barely alive, the technician appeared completely at a loss; yet he also seemed concerned about having left the substation unmanned. After a moment’s hesitation, he somehow managed to devise a plan for disposing of the body.

“Look here—this isn’t the time to be investigating why Miss O-Yu died or who killed her.
More than anything, you need to worry about your own safety.
Listen—my shift change comes in thirty minutes.
Then regardless we’ll carry Miss O-Yu’s corpse somewhere far away.
It’s to keep your relationship with Miss O-Yu from being discovered.
And you’ll disappear somewhere using the first morning train for now.
That’s the safest way.—There’s thirty minutes left.
You stand guard over this corpse and wait behind the substation’s storage shed.
Even if you forget—don’t make a sound.
Because our partner here is Kita-kō.”

That was such a reassuringly calm judgment that it seemed almost excessively dependable to Kunitaro.
The only source of anxiety was this partner Kita-kō that the engineer had mentioned—namely substation assistant engineer Tanaka Kitakazu—who not only served as Boss Kichizō's top underling but also secretly harbored feelings for O-Yu, something Kunitaro had once heard from O-Yu's own mouth. Should they unfortunately be discovered in such circumstances, it went without saying that he would be half-killed without the Boss even needing to be informed.

However, fortunately, the long thirty minutes spent treading on thin ice seemed to have passed without incident.
It was already a little past two in the morning when Toki Kensuke finally came to the shadow of the storage shed, treading softly to muffle his footsteps.

“Alright, you ready?”

With few words, the engineer said this and casually lifted O-Yu’s head.
Yamana Kunitaro frantically grabbed the legs, but the corpse’s solidly heavy body proved far more unwieldy than anticipated—within barely eighteen meters of carrying it, he was already gasping for breath.
And each time they lifted her, the hem would become messily disheveled, O-Yu’s favorite crimson crepe silk hung limply toward the ground.
Each time, they had to stop and adjust the plump, taut white thighs where her crimson crepe silk had slipped.

“This way we can’t keep this up—let’s try carrying her by the arms from both sides.”

However they tried to carry the rigid corpse, it remained a considerable burden; but with no alternative methods available, they simply kept walking. They passed through this alley and crossed Dondon Bridge, emerging beside the gas company. Straight along that path, they somehow managed to steal their way along the dark road—with a deep stream separating them from a cemetery on the left and a coal yard on the right—until reaching the great riverbank. Turning left there and walking about a block along the riverside, then turning left again, they soon emerged into a vacant lot of roughly a hundred tsubo. At the vacant lot's center stood some sort of small illicit shrine. After lowering O-Yu’s corpse into the darkness beyond it, the two finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The fact that they hadn't been seen by anyone along the way was their greatest relief.

“Mr. Toki! Hey, Mr. Toki!”

It was when loud voices shook Toki Kensuke awake that he fully emerged his buzz-cut head from the futon in the night-duty room, the morning sun already riding high in the sky.

"Hey!"

Blinking hard to force open his bleary eyes, Toki found Kita-kō—Assistant Engineer Tanaka Kitakazu—standing rigid as a post before him, sloppily dressed in rumpled sleepwear. Yet Kita-kō's face had gone corpse-pale with tension.

"Uh... The Madam of Imado's been killed," he said. "Butchered right there on the spot, see? I gotta get to Imado right now—do me a solid and cover my shift today, would ya?"

“What?!”

Kensuke was momentarily startled, but without concealing his feelings, he fixed his gaze on Kita-kō’s face.
But Kita-kō paid no heed to such matters; once the engineer agreed to take over the shift, he dashed outside like the wind.

(So brutally murdered) Toki lay without attempting to rise, picturing O-Yu's beautiful corpse that had lain dead yet still lifelike the previous night, finding strange the words Kita-kō had left behind.

"That can't be right."
Vividly conjuring O-Yu's exposed white chest and thick thighs before him, Toki felt his face flush abruptly.

Outside the night-duty room, the crowd swarmed like a scene from a fire.

“Oh, how awful! They say she was a beauty, but her arms and legs are missing!”

“Goodness, what should I do? I’m too frightened to look now!”

At those voices, Toki sprang upright. After hastily throwing on his clothes, he dashed out the back entrance and joined the streaming crowd.

The vacant lot—normally desolate—now swarmed so densely with people that movement seemed impossible. Though dreading to face last night’s corpse again, Toki shouldered through the mass, pressing ever forward. When he glimpsed O-Yu’s body through a gap in the throng, the sight nearly wrenched a cry from his throat.

The corpse of O-Yu—both arms and legs cruelly cleanly severed—lay completely naked, half-submerged in the stream. Her white snake-like skin took on a pale, eerie glow in the morning sun, while the cut surfaces presented a noxious purplish-red hue like that of a split fig fruit.

*This can't be happening.* Toki instinctively turned his face away from the overwhelming sight, but suddenly found himself wondering—what would become of that timid Kunitaro, who by now was probably seventy-three miles away from Tokyo—if he were to see this? At the same time, he felt a lightness as though completely absolved of the corpse abandonment crime he had committed the previous night; having no desire to ever lay eyes on O-Yu’s eerie corpse again, he simply turned on his heel and left.

But what a bizarre incident this was. During the approximately three minutes O-Yu had stood alone in the alleyway, someone had skillfully killed her without leaving a single wound. Though Toki and Kunitaro had transported the corpse to the vacant lot, by morning it lay discarded without even a scrap of cloth covering it—moreover, someone had severed its limbs and carried them away. Depending on perspective, one could imagine that the initial perpetrator who killed O-Yu—whether out of jealous passion or some other grudge—had followed the two men transporting the corpse to commit further brutality there; or alternatively, that after being abandoned in the vacant lot, O-Yu had miraculously revived only to suffer this cruel killing anew at the hands of some passerby—neither scenario could be entirely ruled out.

At any rate, the mysterious corpse of O-Yu, the White Snake, quickly became not just a matter for the local police but a major issue for the Metropolitan Police Department's Violent Crimes Division, prompting an immediate and bloodshot-eyed large-scale search.
O-Yu’s corpse was immediately transported to the university hospital and subjected to an autopsy, but no criminal cause of death could be determined from it—with some even suggesting it might have been a case of sudden death—yet given the extent of the corpse’s mutilation, the homicide theory continued to be widely advocated.

Thereupon, the corpse was temporarily handed over to her husband Kichizō, and all the relatives gathered at the Imado residence for a solemn wake—but during this occasion, an unexpected quarrel erupted abruptly. This began when Boss Kichizō—who had been sitting beside his beloved wife’s coffin with arms perpetually crossed—saw Kita-kō stand up to offer incense and hurled bitter words at him.

“Kita-kō, you better remember this.
“They say the grudge of a murdered woman haunts for seven lifetimes.”

“What the hell, Boss.”
“This ain’t no joke!”

“What?! What husband cracks jokes when his wife’s been killed?”
“I’m telling you this for your own good.”
“If you think about posterity, now’s the time to――”

“Boss! That’s a damn slippery way of talking.” Kita-kō, who had been forcing a bitter smile, snapped and shifted his stance when pushed that far. “If it’s a joke, keep it a joke, Boss! If you mean that seriously, I won’t stay quiet. You lunatic! You know what the Madam’s corpse is saying? You ain’t the only one!”

“The hell you say?! So you’re repayin’ my kindness with betrayal. Fine—got somethin’ to tell ya. Who the hell found O-Yu’s corpse first? What kinda bastard from where? That night—where’d you slink off to? You stuck a dagger in O-Yu’s chest…”

“Boss! Are you saying I’m the one who killed the Madam?!”

“Ask your own heart and you’ll know.”

“What did you say?!”

A teacup flew through the air and shattered against the wall.
The instant their faces twisted with rage, both men lunged at each other from opposite sides—but out of respect for the Buddhist altar nearby, those present intervened and were barely pulling them apart when detectives who had been lying in wait came stomping into the room.
And all involved parties were immediately taken into custody.

However, after about two hours had passed, only Electric Kita-kō remained in custody, while the rest of the group was released from police custody.
The remaining Kita-kō did not utter a single word about his actions on the night of O-Yu’s death.
At that time, Kichizō’s testimony was as follows.

“I closed the shop at ten, and since O-Yu wasn’t home, I decided to visit Tamanoi for the first time in ages.”
“I passed through Imado and Hashiba, then crossed Shirahige Bridge.”
“But since I wasn’t really in the mood, after looking around a bit, I went home around two o’clock and went to bed.”
“The next morning, as I was idly listening around, I happened to catch wind through a subordinate’s rumor that they’d seen Kita in Tamanoi the previous night—and it wasn’t long after that when I received word O-Yu had been killed.”

Then why hadn't Kita-kō clearly explained his actions that night? According to what Engineer Toki had inadvertently revealed to Kunitaro that night, wasn't Kita-kō—that is, Assistant Engineer Tanaka—supposed to have been on duty at the substation during that time?

However, when Kita-kō finally spoke two or three days later, this unexpected statement had been made.

“To tell the truth, I had feelings for the Madam—that is, Miss O-Yu.”
“So I tried many times to catch her eye, but it never worked out. Then that day, when I heard Miss O-Yu had gone to stay overnight in Negishi right after sunset, I secretly confirmed the house address there and went after her.”
“I remember reaching Negishi around eight o’clock.”
“But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find what seemed like the right house. So then I went around checking every back door one by one, listening for Miss O-Yu’s voice—still couldn’t track her down.”
“Before I knew it was eleven-thirty already. Suddenly feeling how utterly ridiculous it all was, I wandered back on foot and ended up at this place called Manjiro in Senju, where I paid for a woman named Hanaka to keep me company.”
“I probably got there around twelve-thirty or one.”
“Left around six-thirty next morning.”

“Why did you keep hiding this until now?”

“Heh heh—if I’d carelessly mentioned tailing the Madam, I thought serious suspicion would fall on me—”

The police immediately investigated Manjiro and found his account generally consistent.

O-Yu’s time of death had been determined through autopsy to be around one o’clock in the morning.
From the perspective of timing, this meant Kita-kō’s suspicion became weaker than the Boss’s, and consequently he too was temporarily released.

The police were not detaining anyone else as a suspect, and the case appeared carelessly neglected; but in reality, the investigation had spread in all directions, with detectives unfailingly tailing anyone who seemed even slightly suspicious.
However, until seven days after O-Yu’s death, they had been unable to obtain any promising leads.

Then on the eighth day, two new reports finally came in.
One was the fact that since that day, Kichizō's shop had been using an extra five kanme of ice each time for the refrigerator; the other was a report that from the list of those who had gone missing since that day, someone had seen Yamana Kunitaro—a university student—bringing a woman of similar age to O-Yu into his room once or twice.

The special investigation headquarters established for the O-Yu case was stirred into action by these two reports; the chief immediately directed police toward Kichizō’s shop while launching an all-out search for Yamana Kunitaro’s whereabouts.

Kichizō promptly opened three refrigerators of various sizes for the police inspection; regarding the increased ice consumption,

"Well, given how warm it's gotten, the ice just keeps accumulating more each day," he explained casually.

However, the chief investigator was not about to be satisfied with such an explanation, and arranged for detectives to stake out beneath Kichizō’s shop every night for the time being, determined to grasp any thread of the case wherever it might lead.

Meanwhile, regarding Yamana Kunitaro's disappearance, detectives who had been stationed at the substation to surveil Kita-kō had fortuitously obtained a lead. This occurred because investigators traced evidence from an anonymous letter addressed to Toki Kensuke, chief of the substation, and through the postmark determined that Kunitaro was hiding near Imaichi in Tochigi Prefecture.

Now that Kunitaro had finally been arrested, how would the case unfold? There was a witness to Kunitaro and O-Yu's secret meetings, and since O-Yu was already dead when Engineer Toki was summoned to the scene that night, it would be impossible to argue that Kunitaro bore no relation whatsoever to this homicide. At the same time, since the disposal of O-Yu's corpse came to light, room for suspicion now arose regarding Engineer Toki. Since Toki had been alone on duty that night with no other witnesses, if O-Yu had indeed been alone in the alleyway as Kunitaro claimed, then Kensuke could have attacked O-Yu during that interval.

In this way, the number of murder suspects grew to four.

The following evening, Yamana Kunitaro was escorted from Imaichi. The youth had become visibly haggard from days of mental torment and appeared to have sunk into extreme neurasthenia; even simple interrogations required unexpectedly protracted responses.
Yet in the end, Kunitaro was compelled to confess every detail previously mentioned. What immediately came under scrutiny was Toki Kensuke's conduct.
First, the method of corpse disposal proved far too systematic for what should have been an impromptu act.
Most critically, he had told Kunitaro,

“Since Kita-kō is my partner—” he had said, but in fact, Assistant Engineer Tanaka had been off-duty that night—a fact clearly corroborated by the substation’s log.
Then why had Toki resorted to such a lie?

At that moment, the telephone in the interrogation room suddenly rang out.
The chief investigator immediately picked up the receiver but abruptly turned pale.
Then, temporarily suspending Kunitaro's interrogation, two or three subordinates whispered something among themselves and hastily piled into the car together.

The night was already nearing the dead of night.

After abandoning the car, the chief investigator entered Katō Beef Shop through its side entrance, where detectives who had been staking out the place were waiting and immediately guided him to Kichizō’s inner room. It had been installed on one wall of that room.

The wall was pushed open sideways like a door under the detectives' hands, revealing a closet roughly six feet in width and three feet in depth. At its center stood a large refrigerator enshrined like a Buddhist altar. When its door was opened before him, even the chief investigator couldn't help but avert his face with a gasp. Inside stood a young woman's figure from the thighs downward—a kimono of faded indigo with thick black latticework over creeping vine patterns, modest in design yet flaring naturally from the knees where beneath it blazed crimson crepe silk so vivid it stung the eyes, the hem kicked out to reveal a glimpse of wax-white calves swelling like risen dough. However one examined it, this was unmistakably the lower torso of a young woman. These were O-Yu's legs beyond doubt, her arms discovered alongside them. The police promptly confiscated these remains, though Boss Katō Kichizō had already been arrested as the prime murder suspect, crossing paths with the chief investigator during transfer.

Eventually, the night fully broke.

While society was abuzz with talk of first blossoms unfurling, within the police station's interrogation room, the intensely strained questioning of Kichizō continued unabated.
However, he persistently insisted that he was not the culprit.

“I did tell you I went to Tamanoi that night, but the truth is I got worried about O-Yu and Kita-kō, so I went to check on Kita-kō’s place in Terajima. However, since it seemed that not only O-Yu but even Kita-kō weren’t at home, I figured they must be having their secret rendezvous somewhere else, and so I came back across Shirahige Bridge toward Hashiba. Right then it suddenly hit me—maybe they’re over in Senju. So figuring I’d storm into the substation, I turned right at the bridge approach and took the back way toward Sumida Station. It was probably a little past two o'clock, and as you know, there's that shrine for lovers there, so I thought I'd pay it a quick visit. And then, thinking I might as well relieve myself, when I went around to the back of the shrine, I ended up finding O-Yu’s corpse there—I was completely shocked. Now this is in front of you sir, but that woman had a rather peculiar aspect—in other words, she had this disposition where she’d actually take pleasure in being made to suffer. So they’d often tell me—‘If you’re so damn worried about your mistress, why not just cut off her arms or slice her ears? She’s your property anyway.’ That’s what she kept saying. The fact that she meant it seriously—it’s shocking, don’t you think? That's what I recalled the moment I saw O-Yu's corpse that night—if we left her like that, they'd have to cremate her whether they liked it or not. Then these pretty limbs would never be mine again. Heh-heh—so with that feelin' gnawin' at me, I hightailed it home and helped myself to the arms and legs. I did the work in that stream to keep the blood from splattering. All I did was just this—as for the bastard who killed O-Yu, if I knew who it was, I’d have offed ’em ages ago…”

However, for the chief investigator, it wasn't inconceivable that Kichizō's mutilation of the corpse had also served as a means to create a temporary alibi.

The arms and legs of O-Yu in question had been sent to the university’s forensic medicine department, where they were zealously studied for evidence of criminal acts.
As a result, not only was Kichizō’s claimed method of dismemberment affirmed, but four mysterious wounds were discovered elsewhere.
The first was bite-like shallow wounds at two locations—the tips of the left thumb and index finger—with identical wounds also present on the soles of both feet; however, being extremely small and showing no traces of blood seepage, it was considered possible that Kichizō might have inflicted these after O-Yu's death.
However, when Associate Professor W from electrical engineering—who happened to be visiting—took one look at them, he advised, “You there, these are wounds sustained from high-voltage electrocution.”

At the police station, the chief investigator had been struggling with Kichizō's interrogation and decided to temporarily suspend questioning, preparing to issue an arrest warrant for Toki Kensuke of the substation on charges of corpse disposal. When he began writing the application, the lights in the room abruptly went out. And so the blackout continued for a full hour—an occurrence both unusual and unprecedented in recent times.

"What's going on here? This is no joke!"

The moment the chief investigator finally lost patience and stood up to try calling the substation by telephone, the lights abruptly flooded the room with brightness.
At the same time, the telephone bell buzzed insistently.
It was a call from the university’s forensic medicine department informing them that O-Yu’s cause of death had been high-voltage electrocution.

The chief's profile tensed severely; upon hanging up the receiver, he immediately initiated procedures to apprehend Engineer Toki—but no sooner had he done so than the telephone rang again.
That was the lengthy report from a subordinate at the substation.

In essence, the recent blackout resulted from two men being electrocuted after touching a 1,000-volt electrode at the substation—their entire bodies charred black to the point where distinguishing one from the other proved nearly impossible at first glance. However, there remained no doubt: one was Engineer Toki Kensuke who had been on duty, the other Assistant Engineer Tanaka known as Kita-kō.
The cause of this tragedy remained under investigation, but based on how their bodies were entangled, it appeared one might have rushed to rescue the other who had been electrocuted only to collapse himself—or there were indications that some struggle had occurred between them, resulting in electrocution while they remained locked together.

“So they finally did it… What a wretched waste,” he murmured through clenched teeth.

Releasing the telephone receiver, the chief investigator muttered to no one in particular and sank into his chair as though collapsing.

According to subsequent reports, a technician who had climbed up high for emergency repairs discovered strange wiring.
Whether by intent or accident, it passed through the substation's wall to the eaves of the house across the way, its end touching a gutter made of sheet metal.
If high-voltage electricity were supplied to this wiring, needless to say, anyone touching the gutter would undoubtedly die instantly.
And O-Yu had collapsed right beside that very gutter.

So, was the culprit who killed O-Yu Toki Kensuke or Kita-kō?

When examining both men's pasts, Toki had been diligently transferred from substation to switching station with no notable variation beyond this monotonous career path, whereas Kita-kō had experienced various aspects of electrician's life. Moreover, having served as a test supervisor at the factory when O-Yu was still employed there, it was said he had witnessed an incident where a colleague died cleanly during testing—sustaining only small wounds on fingertips and soles—when a fuse blew too rapidly during electrocution.

Now, if the culprit was Kita-kō, then having vied with the Boss for O-Yu's affections only to find her unyielding, he might have sneaked out that night despite being off-duty, committed the crime, and then skillfully made an appearance at the Senjū pleasure quarters afterward—such a scenario could be considered.

However, once again, a forty-year-old man who knew O-Yu the White Serpent said this.

“That sort of woman is exactly the type we older men get drawn to, you know. Boss Kichizō’s the same way, wouldn’t you say? And Mr. Toki was right around his unlucky age too, wasn’t he? No matter how chummy you are with someone, seeing them having their fun right under your nose—well, it might stir up some strange mischief in a man. Especially when he’s got skilled hands like that—”

In any case, after both men died, the investigation into O-Yu’s murder was promptly discontinued, leaving these notions as nothing more than the groundless theories of overzealous minds.