Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Kaoru Unno

1

It was the coldest night in recent memory.

By the calendar, it was still counted among autumn days—yet whether due to sunspots or not, the mercury column in the thermometer had plummeted downward. In that late hour, everyone outdoors—whether standing guard, walking in silence, or dozing beneath eaves—fairly erupted into ceaseless sneezes,

“Brrr, tonight’s gone damn cold!”

muttered a soliloquy to that effect.

A young physicist—an eccentric whose penchant for the macabre had led him to moonlight as an amateur detective—Homura Soroku found himself among those braving the outdoors that night.
He had just arrived at the entrance to Shinjuku’s Broadway at half past three in the morning.

Even Shinjuku—that thriving district rumored to contain Greater Tokyo’s beating heart—now resembled a drowned city at the bottom of some frozen lake.
Grotesquely ornamented buildings stood trembling in soot-colored mist, their spires shuddering violently.
At the distant crossroads, a single arc lamp of brutal luminosity burned like some neglected sentinel, its light shearing through the darkness to bleach an iceberg-bright circle on the pavement below.

On the asphalt pavement walked Homura Soroku with a slinking gait, his boots threatening to freeze solid as he struggled to keep them from being seized.

“The bells’re ringin’, the bells’re ringin’... O Marronnier...”
“...O Marronnier...”

Apparently he was in fine spirits.
Were one to approach him, they would’ve caught the reek of Johnny Walker clinging thick about him.
Where he’d emerged from at this ungodly hour remained unclear, but he’d likely slipped away from an all-night mahjong game at some friend’s house in Yoyogi—succumbing once more to his customary malady—and drifted into the midnight streets.

As his body swayed drunkenly sideways, he thought the unlit streetlamp’s iron post seemed to whoosh toward him from ahead. This thing was bizarre—he barely caught it with both arms, but a dull thud sounded as his head struck against it. The impact jolted him back to sobriety.

“Oh, cold!”

Having said that, he released his hands from the iron post.
The iron post he had clung to was cold as ice.
He felt his hands—which had carelessly gripped it—suddenly lose their heat and all sensation, contracting like mummified hands.
When he casually raised his gaze upward, icicle-shaped objects could be seen glowing white and coldly at the brows of the buildings lining both sides.

“A night cold enough for icicles, eh?”

While rubbing his eyes and looking again and again, Homura began to chuckle.

“Oh—it’s just neon signs.”
And this place was indeed Neon Alley.
“I’m a bit drunk, aren’t I?”

It was Shinjuku's premier café district, a street commonly known as Neon Alley. What had appeared to be icicles were the glass tubes of extinguished neon signs. Had this still been the evening hours, resplendent halos of light in red, blue, and green would have stitched together café names, whirlpools, windmills, and cocktail glass shapes along both rows of eaves—and anyone standing at Neon Alley’s entrance could not have helped but gasp in awe at that dazzling spatial beauty. But now—just past the Hour of the Ox and nearing 4 AM—it wasn’t entirely due to Homura Soroku’s drunkenness that he had mistaken Neon Alley, slumbering like mud, for something else.

After leaving the iron post’s side, he continued staggering forward, finally passing through Neon Alley and pausing for a while under the dim light at its intersection. Perhaps having reached a decision, he crept straight along the wall at the back of Mitsukoshi until he arrived precisely at the center of the crossroads before Musashino Hall, brightly lit by overhead lamps.

“Hmm, what’s that…”

A thunderous crash shattered the night’s silence, suddenly striking his eardrums. The sound—somewhat dull and not particularly loud—was so abrupt and unidentifiable that it seemed to have echoed from a block or two behind him. He half-heartedly engaged his detective instincts while clicking his tongue at those very instincts, scanning the rear for any new noises. But afterward, not a single sound followed—even the noise that had struck his eardrums earlier melted into the stillness, leaving him to wonder if it had merely been tinnitus.

Five minutes, six minutes, seven minutes...

“Hah! A shady character…”

At the dimly lit crossroads marking Neon Alley’s exit, a shadowy figure flashed into view—then instantly whirled around and dashed into the alley alongside the tram line.
The silhouette left no distinct impression on Homura Soroku’s bleary eyes, but it appeared to be a tall man clad in a kimono.

“A crime!”

Having shouted that, he now truly regained his senses and clattered off toward the Neon Alley exit where the figure had appeared.
He turned left at that crossroads and gave chase, but somehow, the figure was nowhere to be found.
It appeared he had crossed the tram line and fled into the maze-like backstreets of Okubo.
If that were true, any pursuit would become utterly impossible.

Homura abandoned the pursuit and turned back toward the original alley.
Where had that shadowy figure come from?
And from which house had that strange sound originated?
Somewhere in that vicinity, it felt as though the stench of death would come wafting pungently at any moment.

He concluded that the source of the strange sound was Neon Alley.
So he dove into that alley and passed through while glaring at the rows of houses all the way to the far end in one sweeping glance, but not a single house had its entrance door or windows open.

Did I get this wrong?

While thinking this, he decided to carefully inspect each window sill and doorway on both sides this time. He snapped on his pocket lamp—one of his disciplined habits—and crouched before Café Osome, closest to Neon Alley’s entrance, illuminating the doorway and stained-glass window frames while searching for abnormalities. But there were no bloodstains dripping down nor fresh traces of muddy boots. The door didn’t budge an inch when pushed. Then this Café Osome should be fine as well. In this manner, he proceeded to inspect each front entrance one by one, moving from café to neighboring café. But he found nothing unusual anywhere.

“Murderer! Aah! Someone help!”
“Aah! Someone help…”

Suddenly, above Homura’s head, a woman’s piercing shriek rang out.
It was exactly in front of the fourth establishment, Café Argon.
The scream seemed to have originated from what appeared to be the third floor area.

"Right... This is definitely a case."
"So that earlier sound was a pistol shot."

Homura Soroku’s drunkenness had completely worn off.
He thudded against Café Argon’s door.
The door swung open with unexpected ease.

In the neighborhood, people finally seemed to have noticed, as sounds of windows opening, voices, and the clatter of geta sandals noisily erupted throughout the vicinity.

As Homura stepped inside, his shoe tip struck something with a *clink*, sending it skidding away.
When he searched with his flashlight, it turned out to be a dandyish lighter.
He took out a handkerchief, picked it up with care, and deposited it into his pocket.
This might also be a piece of evidence that could help solve the mystery of the case.

He passed through the storefront, and behind the rows of Western liquor bottles stood a spiral staircase leading to the third floor. There was another staircase to the second floor, but none connecting the second and third floors. Homura gripped the spiral staircase’s railing and fluidly climbed to the third floor.

“Oh—”

In the room reached after ascending to the third floor lay a plump woman in her thirties wearing a garish nagajuban underrobe, collapsed upon a fluffy bed where rose-tinted dreams still lingered.
Beside her lay another bed, but no figure occupied the space where someone should have been sleeping.

“Pull yourself together—what happened?”

Homura tapped the woman’s alluring shoulder.

Then the woman buried her face even deeper into the bedding while trembling all over and abruptly raised her left hand to silently point toward the neighboring room near the front entrance.
So... there was a corpse lying in this neighboring room?

“Oh, this is—”

Homura placed his hand on the neighboring room’s sliding door, but it stubbornly refused to budge.
Upon closer inspection, the sliding door was indeed a sliding door, but of a custom-made variety: from this side, it appeared to have paper pasted over it, but the reverse side was a sturdy plank door made of hinoki wood or something similar.
The plank door was locked from the inside.
What an intensely secured room this was!

“Do you have a key?”

The woman kept her face buried in the bedding and could only shake her head.
While finally suppressing his gnawing impatience, Homura scanned every corner of the room—but when he noticed the sliding door of a closet slightly ajar, his eyes suddenly lit up.

It had been an open passage ever since Edogawa Ranpo wrote *The Attic Stroller*. When he slid open the closet door, Homura Soroku leapt onto the double-layered shelf cluttered with waitresses' cosmetics and a few bundled parcels, removed one ceiling board, and wriggled into the attic space. He then crawled on his belly toward what seemed to be the direction of the tightly secured neighboring room, but when his hand got caught in something resembling an electrical wire, his flashlight clattered to the floor.

“Damn!”

The light went out, and Homura’s vision blurred.

Through several dozen seconds of growing frustration, his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness.

Then, before his eyes, something like a cat’s eye glowing dimly came into view.
Startled, he reflexively jerked back—but upon closer inspection, it was nothing more than a small knothole in the attic ceiling.

(This is a good find.)

Homura crawled toward the knothole, inch by inch.
The knothole was larger than he had expected—about the size of a one-sen copper coin.
He pressed one eye against it and peered cautiously downward.

“Gah!”

Directly below the hole lay—just as expected—a single gruesome corpse, its face dyed crimson with blood, illuminated by the faint glow of the room’s lamp.
It was a man around fifty years old.
He appeared to have been shot while lying in bed, facing straight upward toward the ceiling.
The wound appeared to be fatal, and there was no sign of any struggle in agony.

From below came thunderous *thud-thud* noises, each time sending intense *bzzzt-bzzzt* vibrations reverberating up to the ceiling. The police officers had rushed to the scene and were likely finally breaking through the heavily secured plank door.

Homura had crawled up into the attic and, while he was at it, thought to check the area’s condition. So he groped around where he’d dropped the flashlight. The first thing that touched his hand was a wood fragment resembling shavings from a pillar. He tried to remove it by pulling, but it remained firmly attached to the attic. As he moved his hand sideways, his fingertips brushed against something chillingly cold—likely a metal fitting—which he then gripped firmly in his palm.

“Oh—this isn’t the flashlight.”

It was a heavy, solid object—extremely cold.
In the darkness, as he groped carefully through the space, there could be no mistake: it was a pistol.

“A pistol had been left here of all places.”

He imagined a certain scene in an instant—that the culprit who had sneaked into this attic had taken aim through this knothole and shot the old man below. Then, the sound he thought he’d heard earlier at the crossroads before Musashino Hall might have been this pistol’s report.

“Hey, you! Get down here now!”

Suddenly, a bright beam of light illuminated Homura’s profile. A police officer, from the attic of the closet they had climbed up earlier, had challenged him.

“I…”

“If you’ve got complaints, save ’em for later.”
“Get down here now, or I’ll shoot!”

It was the fierce resolve of a police officer who might very well shoot in earnest.
Homura forced a wry smile, abandoned any further resistance, and retreated as he was, with only the retrieved pistol as his prize.

Until Chief Inspector Ooeyama Keibu and other police headquarters executives from the Metropolitan Police Department arrived, Homura Soroku was confined in a state of ludicrous wretchedness.

“Officer Toyama,” called Chief Ooeyama, addressing the policeman by name.

“Perhaps we should conduct a preliminary investigation into Detective Homura’s background.”
With that, he obliquely apologized to Homura Soroku for the police officer’s discourtesy.

The formal interrogation began.

The victim was Mushio Heisaku, the owner of Café Argon.

The woman in the adjacent room was one called Tachibana Omine, the mistress of the same man.

Who killed him?

The means of killing—via the pistol Homura had discovered—was largely evident, and arrangements had been made to confirm this through a postmortem examination. Then what entity had climbed up into the attic and, through that knothole, taken aim and shot Café Argon’s proprietor Mushio Heisaku?

“Miss Omine,” Chief Ooeyama addressed the dejected mistress of the proprietor.
“In this room there are two beds laid out—one’s yours, but whose is the other one?”

“Yes.”
“That’s… um…”
“Speak plainly.”
“Oh, that’s… well… It’s our number one waitress Yukari’s bed.”

“Hmm, I see. But that Miss Yukari doesn’t seem to be here—what’s become of her?”

“Well, you see… um… she went out last night and has not yet returned…”

“Now, Miss Omine. Don’t play dumb with me. Whether it’s a bed that’s just been laid out or one someone actually slept in—even our Metropolitan Police officers can tell the difference.”

At this moment, there came into clear focus within Homura’s mind the suspicious figure he had seen near Neon Alley’s exit.

“You can’t say,” Chief Ooeyama stroked his chin.

“Well then—another question: did the proprietor ever incur anyone’s resentment?”

“There is.”
“It may not be my place to say this as his mistress, but the owner of Café Osome four shops down from here—Onnazaka Somekichi—is truly wicked.”
“In this Neon Alley, the ones snarling at each other every day are my master and Onnazaka’s owner.”
“He even sent over a threatening letter once before, you know.”

“The threatening letter—”
“Where is it?”

“Master must’ve put it in the desk drawer…” Omine rummaged through the desk— “Ah! Here it is! This one!”

“Let me see.”
Chief Ooeyama took up the so-called threatening letter in its envelope and read it aloud:

“Get out of Neon Alley immediately.
If you don’t leave, on a cold day, your life will be snuffed out.”

“What an odd turn of phrase,” he remarked.
“‘A cold day’—quite accurate in this case.”
“‘Snuff out’ uses factory slang meaning ‘to destroy.’ Miss Omine—this letter isn’t signed. How can you be certain Onnazaka Somekichi sent it?”

"But there’s no one else outside who would send such a letter!"

"That’s hard to say," the Chief remarked, pausing in thought for a moment. "Do you know anyone around here who works at a factory—or someone who used to be a laborer?"

"Ah, it might be that guy."
"It’s Ippei the neon sign maker."
"He’s a local handyman here in the alley—since he used to be a factory worker, he does neon work now."
"Ippei also comes to fix our neon signs."

“Hmm.”
“What kind of relationship did Ippei and Mushio have?”

“Well... I haven’t heard anything particular about that…”

Omine seemed to finally regain her composure.

“Miss Omine,”

It was Homura Soroku—who had been silently listening nearby until now—that interjected with those words.

"What kind of physique does that Ippei have?"

“Ippei the neon sign maker is tall, bow-legged, and always has a pale face.”

“Hmm, so he’s tall.”
Homura recalled that the man he had glimpsed in the dim lamplight had also been tall.

“Then—are you familiar with an item like this?”

With that, he placed the lighter he had retrieved at the entrance here upon his palm and extended it toward Omine.

“Ah—that’s—”
The moment she caught sight of it, Omine’s face—which had been bright until then—turned ashen, and a slight spasm broke out across her entire body.

2

“Whose lighter is this?”
Homura Soroku presented the lighter he had found at Café Argon’s entrance before Omine could start shuddering in shock.

“...I-It’s Ippei’s,” Omine stammered.

“What? This belongs to Ippei?”
Chief Ooeyama thrust his upper body forward.

“Miss Omine, there was a moment earlier when you didn’t answer.”
“One of these two beds was where you slept—but who was in the other one?”
“That should’ve been Yukari’s futon, your number one waitress—but someone else was in it.”
“Let me make this clear.”
“Mr. Homura here found a tall man running from this place just before four.”
“Then he picked up this lighter inside the house.”
“Which means (pointing at one bed) the tall owner of that lighter had been sleeping here.”
“If this belongs to Ippei the neon guy—you were bedding down with Ippei right here. That what you’re saying?”

“Well, who would ever… with someone like Ippei…”

“There’s one more thing I want to show you.”

With that, Chief Ooeyama exchanged a glance with Homura and thrust the pistol found in the attic before Omine.

“Don’t you recognize this pistol?”

“Ah, this is…”
“This is exactly the pistol Ippei had.”
“That guy—he was going to use this to… to me…”
“...to me...”

Omine must have remembered something—she screamed hysterically.

“I knew it—it’s that guy! It’s him! Ippei shot the master! There’s no other culprit besides him! That’s right! Oh, that’s right!”

“Now, Miss Omine, get a hold of yourself.”
“Hey, Officer Toyama—take this lady downstairs and let her rest.”

When Omine left, only the officials and Detective Homura remained on the third floor.

“What do you think, Mr. Homura?”
Chief Ooeyama called out cheerfully.

“What if we interpret this as a simple crime of passion—where Ippei sneaked into this bed taking waitress Yukari’s place, bided his time, climbed to the attic, shot Master Mushio, fled, dropped the lighter at the entrance on his way out, was spotted by you at the crossroads, and then escaped?”

“But if he intended to flee all along, why would he have been comfortably settled in bed? There are plenty of hiding places—behind curtains or inside closets,” Homura retorted.

“Hmm, how about we consider it this way.”
“This may be stretching it a bit, but that night, after Omine attended to Mushio in his bed, she withdrew to this room.”
“When the old man got up to use the toilet, she glanced at the neighboring futon and thought—That Yukari, what a cold-natured wimp, sleeping with the futon pulled over her head.”
“Then, upon returning to her own room—and because that threatening letter had her spooked—she bolted it tight and went to sleep.”
“So Omine slipped into Yukari’s futon where Ippei had been bedding down and stayed there until half past three.”
“Then, when the timing seemed right, they set their scheme in motion—”

“Even so, committing the crime around 4 a.m. seems a bit too late.”

“Oh, come on—Ippei wrote in the threatening letter that he’d take care of it on a cold day.”
“The coldest time of day—around 4 a.m.—is when temperatures bottom out.”
“And that checks out.”

“You know quite a lot, Chief—that around 4 a.m. is the coldest time of day of all things.”
“Be that as it may, it still doesn’t quite sit right with me.”
“Another thing that bothers me is the nearly ten minutes between the pistol’s bang and the culprit fleeing—this strikes me as somewhat lacking in agility for someone who committed the crime.”
“Even allowing amply, three minutes should be sufficient.”
“Moreover, even though the culprit took nearly ten minutes, they panicked and dropped the lighter, while Miss Omine was too preoccupied with covering her tracks to even notice that Yukari’s bed needed straightening.”
“Judging from this as well, both of them must have been in an extreme panic.”
“If it were a premeditated murder, there’s no reason they should have been in such a panic.”

“Hmm. So what’s your conclusion then?”

“I still haven’t reached a conclusion,” Homura said, shaking his head.

“But unless more people involved come forward, solving this case will be as impossible as finding the solution to a cubic equation with just two equations.”

“Well now—so you consider even Yukari suspicious?”

Just then, with a clattering of footsteps, Officer Toyama from earlier came up.

“Chief, I’ve just brought up Yukari, the waitress—she tried to sneak back in.”

“What? Yukari, the number one waitress…”

When he turned to look, there at the stairway entrance stood a girl in an expensive fur coat and Western attire who, at first glance, resembled Takako Irie.

“Oh, Miss Yukari. Please come over here for a moment.”

The seasoned Chief Ooeyama casually beckoned her over.

“You—last night, around what time did you leave and where did you go? I’m not scolding you, so speak up plainly.”

“Well, I… um… you see… last night, I stayed out overnight…” she confessed straightforwardly. She had gone to stay at the H Bathhouse on the banks of the Tama River with a young man named N, with whom she’d made plans at the end of their outing. Then she said she’d returned here by car around nearly five in the morning, scattering the dawn’s dew as she went.

(Hm… It’s already dawn.)

Homura looked around the room where pale daylight had stealthily crept in, his gaze wandering with apparent fascination.

"There's something I'd like you to look at," said Chief Ooeyama. "Do you recognize this pistol and lighter?"

"This pistol—the one that shot the master."
"No, I don't recognize this."
"But this lighter... Oh, this belongs to him!"
She clenched the lighter tightly in her palm, her eyes flickering with indecision as she glanced furtively at the Chief.

“Miss Omine told me, you know.”

“Oh, so she’s already confessed? Then I don’t need to say it—this is Gin-san’s.”

“What? Gin-san?”
The chief pursed his lips tightly.
“Who’s this Gin-san you’re talking about?”

“Oh—Madam didn’t say it was Gin-san’s? Well, I messed up.”
“Well, since it’s come to this… Gin-san is Madam’s lover—Kimura Ginta, a tall guy like Gary Cooper.”

“Between Ippei and Ginta, which one is taller?” Homura asked from the side.

“Well,” said Yukari, turning to face the new questioner with a slight blush.
“They’re both beanpoles in their own way.”
“So this Ginta fellow must’ve been sneaking into here pretty often too, eh?”
Chief Ooeyama asked.

“I’m the one being made to spill the beans.”
With that, she pointed to one of the beds and snorted derisively.

“Well, that’s enough—thank you.”

The chief signaled Toyama with his eyes to have her escorted out.
The two of them clattered back down the same staircase they’d come up.

“It seems we’ve finally found the last missing equation, Mr. Homura.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a conspiracy between Omine and her lover Kimura Ginta.”
“What we took for Ippei sleeping earlier—that was actually Ginta.”
“The figure you spotted—that’s Ginta too, mark my words.”
“At this rate, we can’t even confirm whose pistol this is.”
“They might’ve swiped it straight from Ippei.”

“I don’t think so. From our earlier discussion, it’s become clear that Omine and her lover Ginta—the one who snuck into this bed—have no connection to the crime.”

“And why is that?”
The chief retorted.

“When Omine and Ginta were in bed together, the pistol suddenly went off, startling them into rushing out.”
“Since Ginta’s presence would’ve caused complications, Omine let him escape. He threw his kimono over his bare skin, stuffed his belongings into his pockets, and fled—dropping the lighter in the process.”
“Once Ginta had put enough distance between himself and the café, Madam Omine screamed, ‘Murderer!’”

“So, who ended up firing that pistol?”

“I can’t say for certain without investigating, but I suspect it was Ippei the neon craftsman who fired the shot. Café Osome’s Onnazaka is also suspicious, though.”

“Is that so? As I said earlier, I think it’s the lover and Omine’s staged performance. Anyway, since I’ve sent Detective Tada to look into the others’ movements too, we should know soon enough.”

Midway through this exchange, the much-discussed Detective Tada abruptly appeared.

“Chief, Onnazaka Somekichi was at home.”
“He apparently didn’t step outside once from midnight last night.”
“Apparently he had diarrhea, so he had his wife rub his stomach and massage his legs all night long.”

“What a conveniently crafted alibi,” the Chief said with a faint smirk.

“Regarding Yukari, we inquired at H Bathhouse and found out she’d been staying with a man called N until 4:30 AM.”
“Then there’s Okubo Ippei—you know, that neon guy—we’ve got something odd on him.”

“Well, well—what’s this now?”

“We raided his place, but he left last night around dusk and never came back—not even by dawn.”

“So…”

“So, thinking this guy was suspicious, on the way back I stopped by Yodobashi Precinct and happened to ask about Ippei—when, surprisingly, I found out he’d been detained at Ueno Precinct.”

“What? You’re saying Ippei’s been tossed into Ueno?”

The chief wore an expression of irrepressible suspicion.

“Actually, Mr. Ippei—starting around midnight last night—planted himself at Yamashita’s oden stall, knocked over a dozen or so sake bottles, and caused quite a scene.”

“Finally, around two in the morning, when the stall owner told him to leave so they could close up, he retorted, ‘Who do you think you are?!’ shook the oden stall, and ultimately knocked the whole thing over into the street.”

“So he was detained overnight at Ueno Precinct, but he was released from custody this morning at five-thirty.”

“So, this is another brilliant alibi for not being at the scene. Hey Mr. Homura—when that pistol went bang in the attic, seems Ippei was getting chewed by lice in Ueno Precinct’s pigpen.”

“……”
Homura remained stubbornly silent.

“Now then, Detective Tada,” the chief said, turning toward the detective.

“I want you to track down a man named Kimura Ginta.”

“That bastard seems to have conspired with Madam Omine and stabbed the boss in the back.—Well then, let’s move this investigation somewhere more convenient—downstairs.”

Homura Soroku’s pride lay in tatters.
The very person he had accused as the culprit had, ironically, spent a night in a police detention cell—crafting the most impeccable alibi.
No matter how orderly a deduction Homura might have had, the fact of that alibi could be said to have blown it to smithereens.

(But what if...) Homura descended the spiral staircase quietly, still clinging stubbornly to thoughts he couldn’t bring himself to abandon.

(What if... the culprit wasn’t at the scene, and the pistol fired on its own?)
Was that truly an utterly impossible scenario?
Just how much would someone like Ippei be capable of?
He was a neon sign craftsman, but...

The attic pistol.
What also nagged at him was that phrase from the threatening letter: “I’ll finish you on a cold day.”

When he suddenly noticed, there was the commotion of a man and woman arguing loudly downstairs.

“But I just can’t remember, no matter what!” Yukari—the top waitress from earlier—said in a nasal whine.

“You’re just joking around.”
“Hey, I’ll treat you real nice later—just hurry up and hand it over!”
The one saying this was a young man’s voice he had never heard before.

“I’m not joking, it’s true.”
“Mr.Ippei, I’m sorry, okay?”

Ah—the young man she’d been arguing with was Ippei.
Homura halted mid-staircase, nearly crying out.

“You’re such an idiot… Ugh.”
Ippei groaned painfully.
It seemed she had lost something extremely important that he had entrusted to Yukari.

“You should properly explain things to the clerk and work it out,” Yukari said nasally. “I lost a pawn ticket from that shop once too and panicked, but when I told them my story, they gave it back no problem.”

What Yukari had lost appeared to be Ippei’s pawn ticket. Why would someone entrust something like that to her in the first place?

“I ain’t askin’ your help no more!”

With that snarl, Ippei stormed out through the back door.

When he stepped outside, Ippei glanced around warily before breaking into a rapid dash at a brisk pace. He crossed the tram tracks and ran into Okubo’s nagaya district, then wound through narrow alleys before dashing into a pawnshop named “Ounoya,” its name stenciled in white characters.

“I’d like to retrieve the meisen haori I pawned here the other day.”

“Ah, as for that haori—it’s already been retrieved and taken home.”

“Damn it!”
“That bastard went and picked up the pawn ticket!”
“That’s gotta be it!”
“What kinda person was’e, Mr. Clerk?!” Ippei demanded, his face flushing crimson then draining pale as he stamped his foot in frustration.

At that moment, an unexpected voice came from the dimly lit corner of the earthen floor.

“This may feel like cheap theatrics, but that person you’re looking for… is me.”

“Who the hell’re you?” Ippei demanded, eyes bulging.

“Please return the haori. That’s mine.”

“I’ll return the haori. Here. But as for this contract sewn into its collar—hand that over to me.”
“I am Homura Soroku, an amateur detective.”

“Urgh!”
When Ippei lunged with lion-like fury, Homura deftly sidestepped left. As Ippei regained balance and charged again, Homura drove an uppercut from below into his jaw with a grunt—the flawless strike sending Ippei sprawling lengthwise at Homura’s feet.

***

After the incident, the amateur detective Homura Soroku announced the following.

“The murder method with an alibi devised by culprit Ippei was fundamentally tied to both the neon sign and that day’s abnormal temperature drop.”
“You may find this hard to believe, but we’re looking at a pistol installed in the attic that was fired through an electrical mechanism.”

“To clarify further—the trigger of that attic-mounted pistol had been rigged to pull via an electrical system.”
“This system relied on two copper contact points attached to both the neon sign’s glass tubes and their mounting wall—normally kept separated to remain inert.”
“Now consider how neon signs are structured: they’re affixed to a building’s highest wall section. Observers below might assume those gas-filled tubes are securely anchored throughout—but truthfully? Only one end gets fixed properly; the opposite side merely rests on a flimsy support.”
“This design accounts for differing thermal expansion rates between walls and glass—walls expand significantly more than tubes during daylight hours but contract sharply at night.”
“These fluctuations grow especially drastic atop high rooftops.”
“Ippei exploited precisely this phenomenon.”
“Those two copper contacts ran indoors—one linked to the pistol’s trigger mechanism and another spliced into Café Argon’s main power line.”
“By day they stayed well apart—but come nightfall near dawn? The wall’s accelerated contraction would narrow that gap dramatically.”
“Under normal cold? Still no contact—but that night’s freak freeze forced such extreme contraction that sparks finally bridged those points.”
“Current surged through—yanking the trigger hard enough to fire with a thunderous report.”
“Ingenious really—unless temperatures plunged bone-deep like they did that dawn? Those separated contacts would’ve drawn zero suspicion during routine inspections.”
“And that particular night? Forecasters had warned of unprecedented cold—so Ippei knew his attic gun would fire near daybreak.”
“He spent early evening stirring drunken chaos near Ueno Station—got himself arrested intentionally—thereby cementing an ironclad alibi while Mushio Heisaku’s skull caught that bullet.”
“Recoil scattered ignition wires far beyond recognition—even if found? Utterly meaningless debris.”

“The motive for the murder?”
“That will become clear when you read the contract I extracted from Ippei’s haori.”

Murder Contract

Article 1. The undersigned hereby attest that the request made to you regarding the killing of Mushio Heisaku is genuine.
Upon successful completion, the reward of 10,000 yen shall be delivered in exchange for this document.
For future reference, this written pledge stands accordingly as witness to the above terms.

April 1st Onnazaka Somekichi※ (circular seal)

Mr. Okubo Ippei

In short, the man called Ippei was a member of the Japanese Capone Gang.
The reason he had deposited the pawn ticket was that he feared the police would investigate it that night.
"And of course, it goes without saying that Onnazaka Somekichi, owner of Café Osome, was also arrested as the principal offender that very day…"